Description:
Robert Havell Jr. was known to create oil sketchs in the field before painting his final version. Perhaps this is the prelininary sketch for the larger painting of this scene HD 85.030. Unframed painting of the "Williams House Deerfield" by Robert Havell, Jr. (1793-1878), which has an ink-inscribed paper label which reads "Williams House Deerfield / Massachusetts / Robt Havell / Tarrytown on Hudson" on the back. HD also has a similar painting titled "Old House of the Rev. Mr. Williams which Escaped the Conflagration in Deerfield, Mass. in 1704" (HD 85.030), which was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in New York City in 1853. This version of the "Wlliams House" may have been done after the "Old House" based on the "Terrytown" reference on the label. English-born Robert Havell, aquatint engraver and landscape painter, is better remembered as the principal engraver of John James Audubon's "Birds of America," on which he worked in England from 1827 to 1838. He emigrated to America in 1839, living with Audubon in Brooklyn, NY, for 2 years and visiting the Connecticut Valley about 1840. In 1841, Havell and his family moved to Sing Sing (now Ossining, NY) where they lived to 1857, and then moved to Terrytown where Havell lived and painted until his death in 1878. This is a romantic landscape of the Main Street in Deerfield with the house known as the "Old Indian House" in the background, which was built about 1698 by John Sheldon (1658-1733), son of one of the original Deerfield lot owners. This house was famous for surviving the Indian attack on Deerfield in 1704, and the movement to stop its demolition (unsuccessful) in 1848 marked the first attempt at historic preservation in America. The Old Indian House has a group of three people standing outside of its gate; the area in front of the house with its tall mature shade trees has three cows and a man is playing with a dog under a large tree on the left. On the right, a man in a suit and wearing a hat and woman walk down the unpaved Main Street toward three men stopping to talk, three more cows, and a second dog running to the road to bark at them. The title label was attached after the painting was mounted to a sheet of fiberboard; there is also an old paper label on the stretcher, "87/17", and a new paper label, "945/22 29." Some restoration is evident in the area of the large elm tree on the right side.
Tags:
landscapes Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2002.13 |
