Lot 26: * RUTH WHITTIER SHUTE AND SAMUEL ADDISON SHUTE

painted circa 1832; in a period frame. Together with a red morocco leatherbound bible, the front gilt-stamped Adaline (sic) Bartlett.

PORTRAIT OF MISS ADELINE BARTLETT HOLDING A LETTER

framed 28 3/4 by 25 in. 73 by 63.5 cm.

watercolor, pencil and ink on paper

An Eye on America: American Folk Art from the Stewart E. Gregory Collection, Museum of American Folk Art, New York, 1972

Women in Folk Art, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1973

Masterpieces of American Folk Art, Monmouth Museum, Lincroft, New Jersey, 1975

A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century, The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992

Helen Kellogg, "Found - Two Lost American Painters," Antiques World, December 1978, p. 42, no. 25

John Gordon, Masterpieces of American Folk Art, Lincroft, New Jersey, 1975, illustrated, unpaginated

Marna Anderson, A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992, illustrated in color, p. 37

The Estate of Mrs. Austin Palmer, Hopkinton, New Hampshire

Evelyn Wilcoxen, Henniker, New Hampshire

Mary Allis, Southport, Connecticut

Collection of Stewart E. Gregory, Wilton, Connecticut

The Stewart E. Gregory Collection, sold in these rooms January 29, 1979, Sale 4209, lot 264

Collection of Alvin and Claude Bisnoff, New York

Walters-Benisek, Northampton, Massachusetts, 1991

Adeline Bartlett was the daughter of Samuel and Jemima Bartlett. She was born May 6, 1812 in Newburyport, Massachusetts, and was 20 years old when she sat for this portrait. She holds in her left hand an envelope inscribed Miss Adeline Bartlett, Lowell, Mass. The postmark in the upper corner has been painted to read Newburyport, Mas (sic)/ Feb 9/Paid 10.

Ruth Whittier Shute (1803-1882) was born in Dover, New Hampshire, just one month after her future husband Samuel Addison Shute (1803-1836) was born in Byfield, Massachusetts. The Shutes were married in 1827 and settled in Weare, New Hampshire, where they appear to have begun their artistic careers. Samuel was a physician who may have pursued a medical practice while also painting portraits. They traveled throughout New England and upstate New York in search of commissions until Samuel's untimely death in 1836. Ruth remarried in 1840 and moved with her husband to Kentucky, where she died in 1882.

The only documentation on the Shutes' individual contributions to their collaborative works are three inscriptions that read: Drawn by R.W. Shute/and/Painted by S.A. Shute. Scholars generally attribute the clearly defined graphite facial features as being by Ruth's hand, and the broad areas of vivid colors as Samuel's. A group of watercolor likenesses that share paint characteristics with these signed portraits but lack the facial definitions are thus ascribed to Samuel alone. (See Lot 28.)

Excerpted from Beatrix T. Rumford, ed., American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Boston, 1981, pp. 182-183.