Christian Hunsicker

Date1850

MediumWatercolor, pencil and ink on paper

DimensionsSight: 11 1/2 × 7 7/8 in. (29.2 × 20 cm)

Object numberN0105.1961

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

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextThese portraits (see N0104.61, N0106.61, N0107.61) belong to a group of over twenty-five stylistically related watercolors executed between 1835 and 1850 in Berks, Lebanon and Lancaster counties, Pennsylvania, by an unidentified portraitist referred to in recent years as "The Reading Artist." The sitters in this group were probably all of Germanic extraction and are usually depicted in one of two loose variations on this artist's basic formula: standing or seated outdoors next to a stone building or picket fence or seated in an interior setting next to a window and surrounded by patterned walls and floors. The works are stylistically marked by a robust and intense treatment of facial features, stiff, upright postures and quickly but effectively painted backgrounds. Many of these portraits are accompanied by cardboard frames grain-painted to simulate wood.
ProvenanceTitus Geesey, Wilmington, Delaware; Mr. and Mrs. Howard Lipman, Wilton, Connecticut; Mr. Stephen C. Clark, Sr., Cooperstown, New York
BibliographyDonald A. Shelley, "The Fraktur Writing or Illuminated Manuscripts of the Pennsylvania Germans," (Pennsylvania German Folklore Society, 1961), illus. as no. 81.

Paul S. D'Ambrosio and Charlotte M. Emans, "Folk Art's Many Faces: Portraits in the New York State Historical Association," Cooperstown: NYSHA, 1987, pp. 209-213.

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