Description:
portrait; man; costume/uniform
Label Text:
Asahel Hawks, of Hawley, Massachusetts, married Almira Porter, from the nearby town of Heath on the Vermont border, on December 5, 1835. In this portrait, painted in spring 1848, he is shown in the thirteenth year of his marriage, at the age of thirty-six. Four years earlier, the Hawks had settled in Heath, where their first child, Asahel C., had been born. There, with property acquired from Almira's father, Reuben Porter, Asahel established A. Hawks & Co. Sawmill, which he owned and operated. The family, including Reuben Porter, moved from heath to Buckland in 1863, Asahel dies in 1868, survived by Almira, who remarried.
The artist Phillip Spooner Harris was a native of Heath, the oldest of seven children (two of whom became painters), and grew up on the family farm adjacent to the Porter property. In 1843, the year before Asahel and Almira Hawks moved to Heath, Harris left for Boston, where he is thought to have studied with Ashfield native Alvan Clark. His spare and somewhat severe portraits of Asahel Hawks is framed within the picture by imaginary architecture of columns supporting a small overhead arch (perhaps the artist's attempt to suggest a sculptural niche). These paintings represent an early portrait style that would later become more sophisticated.
In 1850 Harris moved to the wealthy shipping town of Bath, Maine, with its surrounding resorts, undoubtedly in search of clients who could afford his services as a portrait painter. Most of the latter part of his career was spent in Brooklyn, New York, with a trip to Paris in 1872. In 1873, he reported his usual portrait fee as $150 (with $100 for a "head size" picture). Before his death in 1884, Harris briefly returned to Heath.
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