See parts 1-8 also for earlier works.
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This is part 9 of a 21-part post on American Folk Art:
Ammi Phillips (1788-1865)
In
1924 a summer fair in Kent, Connecticut, sparked the rediscovery of a major
American artist when local residents put several nineteenth-century “ancestor
portraits” on display. The strikingly similar canvases depicted graceful women
with long slender necks leaning slightly forward within gleaming dark
backgrounds and firm men in dark suits, often holding newspapers or books in
their hands. The artist, who was then unidentified, was given the appellation
“Kent Limner.” It was not until 1965 that Barbara and Larry Holdridge, with the
support of Mary C. Black, convincingly demonstrated that the Kent Limner
portraits were linked to several other disparate bodies of work and that all,
in fact, were painted by a single artist - Ammi Phillips, at different points in
his career. For more than fifty years, Phillips—whose biblical name
fittingly means “my people” portrayed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of his
friends, relatives, and neighbours in New York as far north as Ticonderoga in
the Adirondacks, south to Bedford, in Westchester County, and throughout the
border areas of Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, and Connecticut.
Phillips
was born in Colebrook, Connecticut, in 1788. He was already travelling as an
artist by 1809, when he advertised from William Clarke’s tavern in Pittsfield,
Massachusetts, that he would paint “correct likenesses.” This promise became a leitmotif
of Phillips’s work over more than fifty years, from the early romantic
portraits of Harriet Leavens and Harriet Campbell—who appear in the guise of
fashion plates replete with Chinese silk parasols and reticules - to his last
portraits of the 1860s.
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 stylised 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).
This is part 1 of 3-part post on the works of Ammi Phillips:
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| 1811c Portrait of a Gentleman oil on canvas 60.3 x 75.6 cm |
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| 1812-13 Portrait of Ashbel Stoddard 87.6 x 76.2 cm |
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| 1812-13 Portrait of Patricia Bolles Stoddard 72.4 x 61 cm |
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| 1814c Girl with Cat 63.5 x 76.2 cm Amon Carter Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| 1814c Henrietta Dorr oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton, NJ |
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| 1815 Mr.Wilbur Sherman oil on canvas 81.3 x 66 cm Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
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| 1815 Mrs. Wilbur (Sarah 'Sally' Stearns) Sherman (1789-1845) and daughter Sarah (1814-1872) oil on canvas 91.4 x 76.2 cm Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT |
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| 1815 Portrait of Harriet Campbell oil on canvas 123.2 x 63.5 cm Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, PA |
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| 1815c Harriet Leavens oil on canvas 144.8 x 71.1 cm Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge, MA |
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| 1815-18c Jerusha Rogers Washburn oil on canvas 64.1 x 47.6 cm |
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| 1815c MaryAnn Gale oil on canvas |
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| 1816 Alsa Slade oil on canvas 102 x 83.8 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1816 Joseph Slade oil on canvas 102 x 84 cm National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC |
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| 1816c Portrait of Mr. Dilbee of Pine Plains oil on canvas 97.8 x 80.6 cm |
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| 1817c Betsy Beckwith oil on canvas 77.4 x 62.4 cm Brooklyn Museum, NY |
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| 1817c Colonel Nathan Beckwith oil on canvas 77.4 x 62,4 cm Brooklyn Museum, NY |
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| 1818c Portrait of a Gentleman with a Snake Cane oil on canvas 74.9 x 61 cm |
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| 1820c Derick Wyncoop and Anna Elting Wyncoop oil on canvas 74 x 59 cm |
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| 1820c General David Robinson oil on canvas Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT |
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| 1820c Jane Daney Smith oil on canvas 81.6 x 66 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1820c Nancy Caldwell Church Robinson oil on canvas Bennington Museum, Bennington, VT |
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| 1820c Portrait of Sally Morgan Walbridge oil on canvas 82.5 x 66.7 cm Private Collection |
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| 1820c Reverend Jonas Coe oil on canvas 122.2 x 97.1 cm Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA |
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| 1821 Portrait of Dr. John McClennan of Livingston, New York inscribed "John McClellan Aged 48 1821/ Painted by A. Phillips." oil on canvas 77.5 x 62.2 cm |
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| 1821-22 Cornelius Allerton oil on canvas 83.8 x 69.9 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1821-22 Mrs. Reuben Allerton (Lois Atherton) oil on canvas 83.8 x 69.9 cm Art Institute of Chicago, IL |
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| 1822 Portrait of Charlotte Newcombe Benedict oil on canvas 75.6 x 58.7 cm Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| 1822 Portrait of Dr. Abijah Gilbert Benedict oil on canvas 75.6 x 58.7 cm Springfield Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| 1824 Hannah Bull Thompson oil on canvas 76.2 x 61 cm The Huntingdon Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA |
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| 1825-30 Portrait of James Ketcham oil on canvas 81.3 x 67.3 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1825-30 Portrait of Lois Belding Ketcham oil on canvas 81.3 x 67.3 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1825c (possibly Ammi Phillips) Portrait of a Man oil on canvas 58.4 x 71.1 cm. |
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| 1825c (possibly Ammi Phillips) Portrait of a Woman oil on canvas 58.4 x 71.1 cm |
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| 1825c Portrait of a Man with Red Curtain oil on canvas 74.9 x 59.7 cm |
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| 1825c Portrait of Cicero Hinds oil on canvas 73.7 x 58.4 cm |
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| 1825c Portrait of Mr. Warburton of Rockboro, Virginia oil on canvas 73.3 x 60.5 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1825c Portrait of Mrs Warburton of Rockboro, Virginia oil on canvas 75.7 x 60.6 cm Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA |
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| 1826c Woman Holding a Hymn Book oil on canvas |
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| 1827 Mary Elizabeth Smith oil on canvas 65.1 x 52.7 cm Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, IL |
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| 1830c The Strawberry Girl oil on canvas 66.3 x 56.3 cm |
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| 1828 Portrait of a Young Girl oil on canvas 61 x 50.2 cm |
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| 1828-38 Portrait of Ann Miller Tompkins |
