Currently not on view
Figures in a Garden,
ca. 1830
Unknown American
x1958-45
Before the establishment of large planned parks in the mid-nineteenth century, American civic leaders sought to combine public burial sites with urban dwellers’ growing desire for retreats from the city by creating "garden cemeteries." While the presence of an urn resting on a cryptlike structure and the willow tree standing in the center of this composition suggest a cemetery, the scene probably does not represent mourners attending a grave site. Rather, the visitors here appear to be conversing and interacting with nature in a curious setting at once evoking garden, cemetery, and drawing room.
Information
Title
Figures in a Garden
Dates
ca. 1830
Maker
Unknown American
Medium
Pen and black ink, watercolor and gouache
Dimensions
47.3 x 60.3 cm (18 5/8 x 23 3/4 in.)
frame: 51 × 64.6 × 3.5 cm (20 1/16 × 25 7/16 × 1 3/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Edward Duff Balken, Class of 1897
Object Number
x1958-45
Culture
Type
Materials
Subject
-
American provincial paintings, 1790-1877: from the collection of Edward Duff Balken: galleries E and F, January 9 through February 23, 1947, (Pittsburgh, PA: Department of Fine Arts, Carnegie Institute, 1947).
, cat. no. 25 -
American folk art: a collection of paintings presented in 1958 by Edward Duff Balken of the Class of 1897 to the Art Museum, Princeton University, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Art Museum, 1958).
, cat. no. 7 - "Recent Acquisitions," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 18, no. 1 (1959): p. 40-42., p. 40
- "Another generation's folk art: Edward Duff Balken and his collection of American provincial paintings and drawings: appendix I: an inventory of works from the home of Edward Duff Balken", special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 57, no. 1/2 (1998): p. 29-30., p. 30
- Colleen Cowles Heslip and Charlotte Emans Moore, "Catalogue of the collection," in "A window into collecting American folk art: the Edward Duff Balken Collection at Princeton," special issue, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University, 57, no. 1/2 (1998): p. 31-162., pp. 82–84, cat. no. 24 (illus.)
- John Wilmerding et al., American Art in the Princeton University Art Museum: volume 1: drawings and watercolors, (Princeton: Princeton University Art Museum; New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press, 2004), p. 87, fig. 1; pp. 301–302, checklist no. 140; p. 302 (left half of verso, rotated illus.)
