Lot 665: * RUTH HENSHAW BASCOM (1772-1848)

inscribed in pencil verso Elizabeth Cummings Low-Boston July 1829 by Mrs. Bascom, Ashby. A jelly label in Nina Fletcher Little's hand repeats the information.

According to Mrs. Little's notes, Dr. Barger of the DAR Museum, Washington, DC, believed the pencil inscription to be written by Bascom.

watercolor, pastel and pencil on cut out paper, mounted over slate-blue paper

16 by 11 3/8 in. 40.6 by 28.9cm

Mary Eileen Egan, Ruth Henshaw Bascom, New England Portraitist, unpublished honors thesis, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1980, ref. p. 105.
Mary Eileen Egan Fouratt, Ruth Henshaw Bascom, Itinerant Portraitist, in Itinerancy in New England and New York, The Dublin Seminar for New England Folk Life Annual Proceedings, Peter Benes, ed. 1984, Boston, Boston University Press, 1986, pp. 190-211, ref. p. 211.

Roland Hammond, North Andover, Massachusetts, 1985
Nina Fletcher Little, Brookline, Massachusetts
Sold in these rooms, The Bertram K. Little and Nina Fletcher Little Collection, Part II, October 21 and 22, 1994, Sale 6612, lot 947
Frank and Barbara Pollack, Chicago, Illinois

Elizabeth Low, born in 1825 in Ashburnham, Massachusetts, lived for some time with her parents Abraham and Emma in Boston, and died in 1842.

According to Nina Fletcher Little, this portrait was collected many years ago by the Coburn family, who lived in the 17th-century house at the corner of Hammond and Beacon Streets, Boston.

Mrs. Bascom's diary, now in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts, lists Mrs. Bascom as working on this portrait of Elizabeth Lowe on September 3, 5 and 24, 1829.

Accompanying this lot is a brief genealogical record for Elizabeth Cummings Lowe.