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145
SAMUEL STILLMAN OSGOOD
Massachusetts/California, 1808-1880
Portrait of Anna Quincy Thaxter Parsons.
Unsigned.
Provenance:
Northeast Auctions, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 5, 2005, Lot #308.
A New Hampshire Collection of Paintings.
Boston-born Samuel Osgood painted this portrait of Anna after 1831. In 1830, Osgood, a former sailor, survived a ship afire 350 miles off the American coast. In 1831 he returned to Boston from study in England and started painting portraits there in earnest, submitting "Portrait of a Lady" in both 1831 and 1832 to the Boston Athenaeum exhibitions.
Anna was the daughter of Anna Quincy Thaxter (1791-1879) and Nehemiah Parsons (1773-1848), a former mariner and merchant on Boston's Long Wharf. Anna was a clairvoyant, whose specialty was reading a person's character, often just from a letter. She was also a women's rights activist who regularly visited Brook Farm, the utopian commune in Roxbury, where some artists and many of Boston's intellectuals lived in the 1840s. Anna and her mother and several sisters were early hikers in the White Mountains and they are credited with naming Cathedral Ledge, Echo Lake and White Horse Ledge, well-known sites in the area that were painted by White Mountain School landscape artists.
Anna was a friend of Samuel Stillman Osgood's wife, the poet Frances Osgood, and their letters to one another survive. Sadly, Samuel and Fanny lost their young daughters within a short time. Fanny, too, died young. The family's touching gravesite at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, includes a monument with a lyre with broken strings representing each lost soul. Anna is also buried at Mt. Auburn.
Provenance:
Northeast Auctions, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, November 5, 2005, Lot #308.
A New Hampshire Collection of Paintings.
Boston-born Samuel Osgood painted this portrait of Anna after 1831. In 1830, Osgood, a former sailor, survived a ship afire 350 miles off the American coast. In 1831 he returned to Boston from study in England and started painting portraits there in earnest, submitting "Portrait of a Lady" in both 1831 and 1832 to the Boston Athenaeum exhibitions.
Anna was the daughter of Anna Quincy Thaxter (1791-1879) and Nehemiah Parsons (1773-1848), a former mariner and merchant on Boston's Long Wharf. Anna was a clairvoyant, whose specialty was reading a person's character, often just from a letter. She was also a women's rights activist who regularly visited Brook Farm, the utopian commune in Roxbury, where some artists and many of Boston's intellectuals lived in the 1840s. Anna and her mother and several sisters were early hikers in the White Mountains and they are credited with naming Cathedral Ledge, Echo Lake and White Horse Ledge, well-known sites in the area that were painted by White Mountain School landscape artists.
Anna was a friend of Samuel Stillman Osgood's wife, the poet Frances Osgood, and their letters to one another survive. Sadly, Samuel and Fanny lost their young daughters within a short time. Fanny, too, died young. The family's touching gravesite at Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, includes a monument with a lyre with broken strings representing each lost soul. Anna is also buried at Mt. Auburn.
Oil on canvas, 30" x 25". Framed 41" x 36".
Condition: Please contact Eldred's 48 hours prior to the auction start time with condition report requests. Please do not bid on any item without reading the condition report. The absence of a condition report does NOT imply that an an object is free of defects or restoration. Please contact Eldred's before bidding with any questions as to condition. Condition reports are provided as a complimentary service and only reflect the opinion of Eldred's and should not be taken as a statement of fact. Condition reports only detail flaws or restorations and do not take into account wear, fading, or other issues consistent with an object's age.
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November 19, 2020 10:00 AM EST
East Dennis, MA, US
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