Description:
landscape; outdoor; death/mourning; allegory
Label Text:
William Mathew Prior was born in Bath, Maine, where he first worked as a sign and ornamental painter. In 1828 he married Rosamond Hamblin and joined an extended family with her brothers Sturtevant, Joseph, Nathaniel and Eli, all four of whom were painters, a traditional occupation among males of several generations of the Hamblin line. From Portland, Maine, where Prior had moved with his wife in the early 1830's, the Prior/Hamblin households moved to Boston, where the in-laws are recorded as living together in Nathaniel Hamblin's house on Chambers Street by 1841. Mount Vernon, particularly George Washington's tomb, was a subject that fascinated William Matthew Prior. He painted a number of versions of the scene during the latter part of his career. In this composition, possibly based on an illustration in "Gleason's Pictorial", a lone horseman contemplates the tomb of the president, which is fronted by a pair of obelisks added in 1852 to mark the graves of Bushrod Washington and his wife. The house is shown at the top of the hill, and the pavilion appears lower down the slope. Boats ply the Potomac in the background.
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https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1950.72 |
