Currently not on view
Girl in Calico,
ca. 1840–1850
possibly by Mary B. Tucker, American, active ca. 1840 - 1850
x1958-50
In the early nineteenth century, the watercolor portrait enjoyed particular success among middle-class New Englanders—customarily young girls would be shown holding a flower or a book, as in this case. The artist has tentatively been identified as Mary B. Tucker, who is documented as having been active in Concord and Sudbury, Massachusetts. Her signed and dated portraits feature sitters with similarly almond-shaped eyes posing against neutral backgrounds that are darkest around the figure. Here the artist deploys the watercolor medium most boldly in the patterned fabric of the girl’s calico dress, which becomes vibrant through the pooling of different hues of brown and blue within the stripes that run together at the center of the bodice.
More About This Object
Information
Title
Girl in Calico
Dates
ca. 1840–1850
Maker
possibly by Mary B. Tucker
Medium
Recto: Watercolor, brush and brown ink, and graphite
Verso: Brush and brown ink over graphite
Dimensions
61.3 x 48 cm (24 1/8 x 18 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Edward Duff Balken, Class of 1897
Object Number
x1958-50
Inscription
Inscribed on old frame back: GIRL IV | FOUND IN MASSACHUSETTS | Req. 56 | B4-T3
Culture
Type
Materials
Private collection, Massachusetts; Edward Duff Balken.;
-
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. 21 -
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).
, no. 21 - "Recent Acquisitions," Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 18, no. 1 (1959): p. 40-42., p. 41
- American primitive watercolors: a traveling exhibition circulated by the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service in cooperation with the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Collection, 1964-1965, (Washington, D.C.?: Smithsonian institution, 1965)., no. 10 (illus.)
- Time, inc and the Museum of Early American Folk Art present paintings and sculpture, (New York: Time, 1966).
- "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. 29
- 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., p. 151–153; cat. no. 60
- 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. 160, cat. no. 36; p. 161 (illus.); p. 319, checklist no. 477
