Description:
Pencil sketch of a house on the side of a hill in front of a line of tall peak extending down to a body of water with a small sailing boat in the background, with the edges of the paper board covered with gold foil and signed "A. Barlow" probably for Frances Anica Preble Barlow (1797-1875) although it might also be by her daugher Anica Barlow (1821-1911). This sketch descended in the family of Timothy Dwight V (1778-1844), son Timothy Dwight IV (1752-1817), the eighth president of Yale College (1795-1817). Timothy Dwight V lived in New Haven, Connecticut, where he became a wealthy hardware merchant. In 1809, he married Clarissa Strong (1783-1855), the daughter of Massachusetts governor Caleb Strong (1745-1819), uniting two prominent New England families. Timothy V and Clarissa's son, Timothy Dwight VI (1811-1895) married Lucy Starr Olmstead (1816-1876), the daughter of Zalmon Olmstead (1783-1853) and Rebecca Barlow (1788-1861) of Moreau, NY, in 1842, and was a merchant in New Haven; a manufacturer of tool and coach lace in Seymour, Connecticut and cars in Chicago; spent many years in Beloit, Wisconsin; and a manufacturer of paper bags in Chicago, Illinois, where he and his family moved in 1870. Timothy Dwight VI was the donor's great-grandfather. Frances Anica Preble was the daughter of Henry Preble (1770-1825), an American who became a merchant in Paris and an English mother, Frances Wright (1773-1845). Both Anica, who was born in Paris, and her sister, Harriet Preble (1795-1854) who was born in England, grew up in post-Revolutionary France where their friends included Lafayette and members of Napoleon's family, and were educated at the school of Madame Jeanne-Louise-Henriette Campan (1752-1822) in St. Germain, where they studied literature, languages, history and the arts and formed friendships with girls who later would marry into the royal families of Europe. They spent the summers at Chateau de Draveil (about 12 miles south of Paris) bought by the American Daniel Parker in 1803, who was her father's friend. Parker, who supported the American Revolution as a supplier and financier, entertained some of the most accomplished men of the day including Lafayette. One of those visitors was Connecticut-born lawyer Thomas Barlow (1793-1859), Rebecca Barlow's brother, who married his cousin Anica at Draveil in 1817. Their first daughter, Frances Emma was born in 1818 at Kalorama, his uncle Joel Barlow's estate in Washington, D.C., and their second daugther Anica in 1821. By 1820, Thomas and Anica were living in Allegheny City where they hosted a luncheon for Lafayette on his farewell tour of America in 1825. After her younger brother's death of tuberculosis, Harriet and her mother moved to America, joining the Barlows in the spring 1830. In 1832, Harriet rented a cottage, which she called Sans Souci, on 10 acres next to the Barlow's where she opened her boarding school with nine boarding students, ages 12 to 14. George Preble describes her as "an admirable sketcher in crayon and India ink, and she could give copies by herself in lithograph." Poor health forced her to close the school in 1836 and retire to Washington, Pennsylvania, but returned to the Barlows in 1838. In the 1840s, the Barlows lived in Washington to educate their sons at Washington College. Harriet remained in Allegheny City, but in 1850 the entire family moved back to Manchester to be close to the Barlows' son Frank, who intended to practice medicine there. Anica had her own school for girls In Manchester, where Mary Cassatt's mother was one of her students.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2008.10.8 |
