Folk
AMMI PHILLIPS (1788–1865)
Lady with a Red Flowered Shawl, about 1824–29
Oil on canvas, 33 1/4 x 26 1/8 in.
RECORDED: David Allaway, My People: The Works of Ammi Phillips (2022), vol. 1, pp. 240 no. 695, 254 no. 755 illus.in color; vol. 2, pp. 43 illus. in color, 113 no. 161
EX COLL.: [Arpad Antiques, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.]: to Mr. and Mrs. Stuart P. Feld, New York, until 1974: to [Hirschl and Adler Galleries, New York, 1974]; to Mr. and Mrs. Harry Rubin, New York, 1974–1989; to Doris K. (Mrs. Harry) Rubin, New York, until 1987, and by descent until the present
The present painting, descriptively called Lady with a Red Flowered Shawl, has been dated to Phillips’ “Realistic Period,” from the mid-1820s to the end of the decade, years when Phillips worked mainly in Orange and Dutchess Counties in New York. These pictures are characterized by dark costumes set against dark backgrounds. Despite similar clothing and poses, the faces of his subjects are skillfully individualized, reproducing not only physical features, but conveying aspects of his subjects’ characters. Sometimes accessories in the paintings provide clues. In happy instances, paintings have descended in families long enough to confirm the identification of Phillips sitters, with genealogical records occasionally supplemented by family documents that shed light on Phillips’ whereabouts at any given period. With careful sifting through local records, the outline of Phillips’ family life and home ownership has been excavated. In 1813, the artist married Laura Brockway of Schodack, Rensselaer County, New York, about ten miles south and east of Albany on the east side of the Hudson River. Five children were born before Laura died in 1830, leaving Ammi with a large young family. The widower remarried five months later to Ann Caulkins of Dutchess County. Between 1832 and 1840, the couple had four more children. A series of real estate transactions has been documented that trace Phillips living with his family in Troy, New York in 1820; in Rhinebeck, New York in 1830; in Amenia, New York in 1840; In North East, a town in Dutchess County, in 1850; in New Marlborough, Massachusetts, in 1855; and finally in Curtisville, part of the town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts. The real estate transactions, though numerous, speak mainly to Phillips’ desire to be able to live to the greatest extent possible with his family while he traveled locally to paint.
It is evident from the pictures that Phillips’ traveled with props. The red shawl in the present portrait appears several times. To the extent that portrait subjects have been identified, it is clear that Phillips painted local gentry and had no problem gaining entry into polite society.
