Description:
Private collector Robert Savage writes this about photographer David Davidson, "Davidson was considered to be one of the top two national leaders in hand-colored photography, second only to Wallace Nutting, in the early 20th century. Davidson met Nutting at Brown University and learned this fine art from him. Davidson spent many afternoons with Nutting in the countryside and took most of his photographs around Rhode Island. He founded the Davidson Photographic Studios in Providence, R.I. and sold much of his work through department stores, gift shops and traveling salesmen. His photos were so popular that hardly a New England wedding occurred where the bride did not receive at least one Davidson picture as a wedding or shower gift. Interest in hand-colored photography ended in the early 1940’s. Among the more than 1000 different shots Davidson took over a 40-year period were his interior and exterior shots from his collection of America’s Colonial Revival Movement. Typically Davidson’s interior scenes did not include people. Davidson always used pencil to title his pictures in the lower left corner, and added his signature in the lower right. Other photographs taken at Deerfield by Davidson include "Historic Homestead," and "The Village Maiden." Framed, colored photograph of the Ray House in Deerfield, Massachusetts, the image shows a view of Deerfield's Main Street with the sidewalk, Ray House in the center, and a woman standing in the flower garden to the south of the Ray House. The woman is dressed in a blue gown with a straw bonnet. The photograph appears to have had a water stain at the top left hand side. According to Miller and McGowan, Family and Landscape, p. 78-79, Benjamin Ray (1797-1879), a wheelwright from Shutesbury, lived in a House on Lot 15 North, which was built around 1830. The house was originally built by Elisha Wells. Ray rented the house and paid taxes until he purchased the house in 1835. When Benjamin Ray died in 1879, his three unmarried daughters continued to live in the house until 1904, when Caroline Ray died. The house had been purchased by the artist James Wells Champney in 1899, when the Ray's heirs were threatened with mortgage foreclosure. Eventually the house was purchased by Deerfield Academy in 1965 as faculty housing.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2019.25 |
