Lot 1224: Attributed to Samuel Hill (American, 1766-1804) Fine American and European Furniture, Silver, Folk and Decorative Arts and Clocks

"View of the seat of his excellency John Hancock, Esqr. Boston" With a small ink script inscription lower right E, ---. watercolor and ink on paper, framed Sheet 5 6/16 x 7 3/4in (13.7 x 179.7cm)

13.7 x 179.7cm

: Private collection, Amherst, Massachusetts Reacquired by a Hancock family descendant

This delightful drawing appears to serve as the original for the engraving of John Hancock's home in Boston, which Hill engraved in 1789 and which was published by Isaiah Thomas and Ebenezer T. Andrews in The Massachusetts magazine, or Monthly museum of knowledge and rational entertainment..., vol. I, 1789. A copy of the engraving can be found in the collection of the John Carter Brown library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, accession # 5437. Hancock Manor was situated at 30 Beacon Street, Beacon Hill in Boston, at the corner of what is today the grounds of the Massachusetts State House. Built between 1734 and 1737 by Joshua Blanchard, for Thomas Hancock (1703-1764), it served as the headquarters for General Henry Clinton during the Revolutionary war. John Hancock gifted it to the state in his will, and two generations of Hancocks lived there into the 19th century before it was demolished in 1863.