Lot 105: PROPERTY FROM THE AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION OF TONY AND SALLY GRASSI, WILTON, CONNECTICUT

PROPERTY FROM THE AMERICAN FOLK ART COLLECTION OF TONY AND SALLY GRASSI, WILTON, CONNECTICUT WINTHROP CHANDLER 1747-1790 VIEW OF A RIVER WITH TREES AND FIGURES

oil on pine panel

PROVENANCE

Henry Grey, Framingham, Massachusetts, 1959
Mr. Hunt
Dr. Artemus Bullard
Reverend Tuttle
Mr. Gordon Wood
Frank Parsons
Mrs. Bertram K. Little, Brookline, Massachusetts; a sale at Sotheby's October 21, 1994, sale number 6612, lot 739
David A. Schorsch, Woodbury, Connecticut
EXHIBITED

New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Art Gallery, American Art: 1750-1800 Towards Independence April 3-May 23, 1976
London, England, Victoria and Albert Museum, July 14-September 26, 1976
CATALOGUE NOTE

Nina Fletcher Little's: "jelly-label" states: overmantel, panel from parlor Ebenezer Waters house, Sutton, Mass. Painted by Winthrop Chandler, Woodstock, Connecticut before his death in 1790.

With his frontal frieze of figures, gaily caparisoned horses and rich, saturated, jewel-like colors, it almost seems as if Winthrop Chandler has serendipitously fused the elegance of the High Renaissance with the charm of the American provincial art. Rich narrative detail introduces us to a cast of eighteenth-century characters including properous, be-wigged gentlemen doffing their tricorn hats in enthusiastic greeting; a carrot-haired wanderer weary and bent under his load and grateful for the physical support of his cane and the moral support of his perky, spotted dog; an exotically attired black servant whose sluggish mount plods along in marked contrast to the inspired horses of the gentlemen; a cloaked, capped, and aproned mother whose duplicate in miniature toddles along side her; and the courting couple permanently locked in a passionate, grasping embrace. Indeed, Mr. Chandler has penned a picture of eighteenth-century life rich with insights into youth and age, flora and fauna, the prosperous and the poor, master and servant, costume and custom. And the cropped figures at either side seem to suggest that the story could unfold and go on and on.

Winthrop Chandler painted this overmantle for Ebenezer Waters' home in West Sutton, Massachusetts. Waters was a civil engineer, surveyor, and conveyancer and brother of Samuel Waters whose portrait Chandler painted, along with that of his wife, in 1779. When Mrs. Little first saw this overmantel it was in situ in the southwest parlor enframed over the fireplace in a raised bolection molding. The woodork in this room and the chamber above, which also boasted an overmantel by Chandler, had once been grained and marbleized in shades of brown and yellow and Mrs. Little posed the possibility of Chandler having lent his hand to the whole decorative scheme.

In 1837, Ebenezer Waters' widowed daughter, Eunice Waters Bullard, married the celebrated preacher, Henry Ward Beecher, in the southwest parlor, and presumably with the blessings of the blissfully interlocked couple above. The portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Waters and the overmantel from the Ebenezer Waters's southwest chamber are in the collections at Cogswell'a Grant.

Exhibition:
New Haven, Connecticut, Yale University Art Gallery and Victoria and Albert Museum, London, "American Art: 1750-1800 Towards Independence", April 3 - September 26, 1976, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue by Charles F. Montgomery, pp. 116-117, fig. 57.56;
Salem Massachusetts, The Peabody Museum, "Land and Seascape," illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p. 7, fig. 1;
Brunswick, Maine, The Bowdoin College Museum of Art, "The Portrayal of the Negro in American Painting," 1964, illustrated in the exhibition catalogue by Marvin S. Sadik, fig. 3

Literature:
Little by Little, 1984, ref. p. 91, pp. 83, 86;
Nina Fletcher Little, "Recently Discovered Paintings by Winthrop Chandler," Art in America, (April 1948), 81-97, fig. 4, p. 90

22 1/2 by 61 in.<br><br>57.2 by 154.9cm