Artist Thomas Waterman Wood (1823 - 1903)

Village Post Office

Date1873

DimensionsSight: 35 3/8 × 46 1/2 in. (89.9 × 118.1 cm)

Object numberN0393.1955

Credit LineCollection of the Fenimore Art Museum. Gift of Stephen C. Clark

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextAs with many genre painters, Wood was fascinated with people. Village Post Office shows a variety of ages and backgrounds from the sleeping newborn, the roughly dressed farm family, the scruffy loungers by the stove to the solicitous clerk, the guarded buyer of fabric and the smartly dressed woman of fashion. Scattered about are some wonderful still-life studies—earthenware crocks, a basket of eggs, a pile of fabrics, and folded mail bags. The background is a muted study of the crockery, foodstuffs, and supplies that one might find in such a country store. In fact, tradition holds that the interior is the Ainsworth store in Williamstown, Vermont, and all the characters were local friends of the artist.
Exhibition History“Twice as Natural, 19th Century American Genre Painting,” Finch College Museum of Art, New York, NY, December 11, 1973 – January 20, 1974.

“A Country Life,” Harding Township Historical Society, New Vernon, NJ, January 1, 1997 – December 31, 1998.

“Image and Memory: Picturing Old New England,” National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, April 1, 1999 – August 22, 1999.

“Art of the Everyman: American Folk Art from the Fenimore Art Museum,” Florence Griswold Museum, Old Lyme, CT, May 28, 2014 – September 29, 2014.

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Not on view