Palemon and Lavinia

Datec. 1806

MediumSilk embroidery and watercolor on satin

DimensionsSight: 18 3/4 × 16 1/2 in. (47.6 × 41.9 cm)

Object numberN0121.1961

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

Photograph by Richard Walker

Label TextLittle is known about Sophia Burpee, except that she was married in 1813 and died the following year, possibly of typhoid fever, at the age of 26. She is the subject of an oil portrait in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and the artist of several watercolors and this silk embroidery probably completed at school. This scene is taken from a print illustrating James Thomson's poem Autumn, published in London in 1730, and shows the moment described in the poem when Palemon recognizes that Lavinia, a gleaner in his field, is the long-sought daughter of his friend, Acasto. Young ladies such as Burpee, who learned their needlework skills in finishing schools, often had access to libraries of illustrated French and English literary works.
Exhibition History"As They Saw It: Women Artists Then & Now", Springfield Museums, Michele and Donald D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, MA, October 14, 2023 - January 14, 2024.
BibliographyAmerican Folk Paintings: Paintings and Drawings other than Portraits from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Boston: Little Brown and Company in association with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1988), pp.170-171.

Susan Burrows Swan, Plain and Fancy: American Women and their Needlework (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1977), pp.175-180.

Nina Fletcher Little, The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection: a Descriptive Catalogue (Williamsburg, VA: Colonial Williamsburg, 1957), p.144.

Georgiana Brown Harbeson, American Needlework (New York: Coward-McCann, inc., 1938), pp.80-92.

On View

Not on view