Dated Web objects before 1800 through 1839

Ammi Phillips

Date: 1827

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.56

Text Entries: Ammi Phillips, from Colebrook, Connecticut, advertised as an itinerant painter in New England newspapers, describing his ability to capture: "a correct style, perfect shadows, and elegant dresses." To promote a pleasing likeness, Phillips offered to supply costumes for his subjects-also a practice of painter Erastus Salisbury Field. Phillips developed a strong clientele base by integrating himself into various communities long enough to be considered the logical choice for portrait commissions. Phillips painted the fair-skinned, six-month old Mary Elizabeth Smith (later Mrs. S. Canfield) an only child from Orange County, New York, against the reddish-black "mulberry" colored background typical of his 1820s works. This painting, representative of the history of many folk portraits, remained in the family before entering the Terra Foundation for the Arts collection. The baby, wearing a delicately rendered white eyelet dress and bonnet, clasps a sprig of ripening strawberries, symbolizing her gender and youth. Children and adults of the nineteenth century often wore coral necklaces for adornment although they previously signified protection against illness and misfortune.

Ammi Phillips

Date: c. 1835

Credit Line: Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection

Object number: 1992.57

Text Entries: (modified anniversary publication entry) In 1809 Ammi Philips began advertising his services as a portraitist and his prolific success as a portrait painter spanned more than fifty years. Demand for portraits steadily increased with the rise of the nation's merchant and middle classes, and self-trained artists like Phillips made a living traveling from town to town painting on commission. Unlike many itinerant artists, however, Phillips often settled, with his family, in a town or village for several years at a time, only moving on when he had exhausted the possibilities for employment in that community. Although many of his works are neither signed nor dated, ongoing scholarship has carefully reconstructed Phillips' oeuvre by tracing his career through county and town records, land deeds, and a collection of official documentation that places the artist in specific regions during certain years. Stylistically linked to a period between 1830 and 1835, Girl in a Red Dress exemplifies the artist's method of using an interchangeable stock of garments and props for his portraits. The painting is one of several similar likenesses in which a young sitter wears a wide-necked red dress, coral necklace, and pulled-back hair surrounded by a dog, carpet, and berries (following the eighteenth-century portrait tradition of using emblematic attributes, Phillips' incorporation of the puppy and berries represents, respectively, the sitter's fidelity and youthful vitality). This stylistic streamlining would not only save time and money for the artist, but would also ensure that each new client would have a reasonable idea of what to expect from the finished product.