Description:
Queen Anne corner chair or roundabout chair with a needlework seat with: "MOLLY WRIGHT" in brown wool tent stiches at right angles at the rear of the slip sea and dated in ink: "1757" on the underside of the seat. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, Mary or "Molly" Wright (1740-1829) was the daughter of Joseph Wright, a properous farmer and brickyard owner, and Mary Gilbert Wright. When Mary Wright was 14 years old, she was sent to Rhode Island for an education, and probably attended Sarah Osborn's school in Newport. Mary Wright was known for the needlework pictures, which include a pastoral canvas based on the shepherdess design popular among eighteenth-century gentlewomen, a series depicting the four seasons, and this slip seat cover, and pocketbooks that she made for family members. Seat covers are rare survivals of refined needlework because of heavy use and changing fashion; Mary or "Molly" executed this seat cover in wool depicting a tree-of-life variation. In 1760, Molly married Richard Alsop (1726-1776) in Middletown, Connecticut, and they had ten children. Born in Newtown, Queens County, New York, Richard Alsop trained in the mercantile house of Philip Livingston, and became a sucessful merchant and importer of West Indian goods. When he died in 1776, the appraisers recorded "1 Round Mahogany Chair wth Workd Bottom L2.5" in the north chamber; there were also eight mahogany chairs with worked seats and two worked fire screens. There is a 1792 portrait of Mary Wright Alsop by Ralph Earl (1975.45.1) in Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/test/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2015 |
