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PORTRAIT OF A DARK-HAIRED YOUNG WOMAN WEARING LIGHT-BROWN DRESS HOLDING A SPRAY OF PINKS

PORTRAIT OF A DARK-HAIRED YOUNG WOMAN WEARING LIGHT-BROWN DRESS HOLDING A SPRAY OF PINKS

measurements
33 by 28 in.

alternate measurements
83.8 by 71.1 cm

circa 1835

in the original giltwood frame, painted in the "Kent" style. From 1829-1838, Phillips (1788-1865) changed his style to what is now known as his Kent style. Phillips' paintings from 1829-1838 are in a new style, infinitely more languid and more highly stylized than any of the likenesses of 1820 to 1828 or the romantic visions of his Border period" (Barbara C. and Lawrence Holdridge, Ammi Phillips: Portrait Painter 1788-1865, 1968). Conservation report accompanies the painting.

In his Catalogue VII, "Excellence in American Design," David Schorsch writes, "This exquisite portrait may be a companion to Phillips's masterpiece "Child in a red dress with cat and dog" in the collection of the Museum of Folk Art."

oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

Wilbert John Hammond, Fishkill, New York
David A. Schorsch, Woodbury, Connecticut

EXHIBITED

Hartford, Connecticut Historical Society, Ammi Phillips 1788-1865, November 1, 1965-February 1, 1966

LITERATURE

The Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin, vol. 30, October 1965, no. 4, described as "197. UNKNOWN GIRL, probably Kent, Conn. Subject may be the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. John Milton Raymond, painted c. 1836"

NOTE

Ammi Phillips is widely acclaimed as one of the most important and prolific nineteenth century painters in the genre of folk portraiture. The unusual longevity of his career and the large number of portraits extant today permit a critical assessment of Phillips's development over more than five decades of artistic activity, and offer a window on changing tastes and patterns of patronage. His given name Ammi, meaning "my people," could not be more appropriate for this consummate artist who portrayed hundreds, and probably thousands, of his people, primarily in the border areas of Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York.

Phillips was born in Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1765. From 1809, when he first advertised in the Berkshire Reporter that he could provide portraits in a "correct style, perfect shadows, and elegantly dressed in the prevailing fashion of the day," until his death in 1865, Phillips's approach to portrait painting underwent a series of stylistic transformations that demonstrate both his maturation as an artist and a practical response to changing fashions over time. These transformations were so profound, that for many years disparate bodies of work attributed to the Border limner, the Kent limner, and others, are now recognized as having been painted by Phillips at various points in his career. It is not known what training if any Phillips received, but his innate talent is evident in the dramatic leaps his skill took in the few years between the awkward portraits of 1811 to the luminous canvases of about 1815 to 1819. The period that followed demonstrates Phillips's easy adaptability, as the canvases become smaller in scale, and he began to introduce deep contrasts of highlighted faces and hands set against rich background colors.

In 1924, several examples of Phillips's work were placed on view by descendants during a summer fair in the area of Kent, Connecticut. The striking portraits of stern men and graceful women emerging from sultry backgrounds excited the art world, which dubbed the still unidentified artist the "Kent limner." It was not until 1959, though, that an association was made between the portraits of the Kent period and the earlier romantic visions of the artist known as the Border limner. At that time, collectors and researchers Barbara and Larry Holdridge, with the support of curator and scholar Mary Black, posited that a single artist, Ammi Phillips, was responsible for both these and later portraits. The basis for this assertion was the signed, dated, and fully inscribed portrait of George Sunderland (1840) that conclusively brought together for the first time documented works in the style of the Border limner, the Kent limner, and related portraits painted through the early 1860s.

During the Kent years from 1829 to 1838, Phillips devised an almost mathematical approach to composition, delicately balancing light, shadow, mass, shape, and color in geometrically precise portraits. The Portrait of a Dark-Haired Young Woman Wearing Light-Brown Dress Holding a Spray of Pinks exhibits many of these characteristics, but displays a new emphasis on modeling the planes of her face, anticipating the realism soon to be introduced through the new technology of photography, and placing this portrait at an interesting transitional moment between the Kent years and the next phase beginning around 1840, when Phillips was traveling in Dutchess and Westchester counties in New York.

The portraits of this period echo the mahogany tones and metallic embellishments of Empire period furniture and decorative arts. Women wear brown, gold, and amber dresses that form a stunning contrast against velvety dark backgrounds. Their heads, with heightened cheek color, are lightly poised on elongated and gracefully leaning necks, their hands are occupied with a book or a flower. Phillips remains faithful to his pledge to paint sitters in the most au courant fashions, here illustrated by the depth of detail described in the young woman's dress. The balloonlike "gigot" sleeves that were fashionable from about 1830 to 1835, are now contained by pleating in the upper arm; the fan-pleated bosom overlays a tight bodice and belted waist that dips to a point in front, mimicking the construction of a corset.

The work of Phillips's later years sheds his characteristic delicacy in favor of a boldness and saturation of color more suitable to the taste of Victorian America and the age of photography. By 1860, Phillips was residing in the town of Curtisville (now Interlaken) in Massachusetts, where he continued to paint masterful portraits of local patrons to within a few years of his death. On July 20 and 27, 1865, in the same area that had witnessed the birth of his career so many years before, the following obituary appeared in the Berkshire County Eagle: "Died at Curtisville, Stockbridge, July 14th, very suddenly, Mr. A. Phillips, aged 78."

Stacy C. Hollander
Senior Curator, American Folk Art Museum