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Overmantel Picture

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Overmantel Picture

circa 1800
oil on panel
25 3/4 in. x 45 5/8 in. (65.41 cm x 115.89 cm)
Henry Melville Fuller Fund, 2004.7

Unknown American
American

ON VIEW

Overmantel paintings were popular in New England during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. As their name suggests, they occupied a focal point just over the fireplace. They could be incorporated within the woodwork above the mantel or painted on a separate board and hung on the wall. Decorative in nature, they typically featured fanciful landscapes composed of familiar local vignettes, including prosperous villages, tidy farms, and ships at sea. Although the artists who painted these subjects usually possessed little formal training, they were often capable of creating well-organized and charming compositions. Appreciated in their own time, overmantel paintings are now esteemed as important examples of early American folk art.

The Currier overmantel was painted by an unidentified artist for the Gardiner Gilman House, which still stands on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, in Exeter, New Hampshire. Built in 1789 for Josiah Coffin Smith, the house was sold in 1823 to the wealthy landowner Gardiner Gilman Jr. It was doubtless one of these two men who ordered the panel, which has been dated on stylistic grounds to the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

Both scenic and narrative elements inform the subject of the Currier overmantel. In the lower left, just beyond a massive elm tree, is a country seat dominated by a three-story mansion. Stone walls and fencerows lead the eye farther into the composition, toward a compact village on the far side of a river. Widening into a kind of bay, the river carries several three-masted ships flying blue flags and pennons. A longboat, doubtless from one of these ships, approaches the village quayside. Sailors raise their oars in salute, seemingly acknowledging the procession of villagers that makes its way down a street toward the new arrivals. The air seems almost festive, and one can imagine the peal of bells from the three churches that dominate the village skyline.

Commentators have argued that the Currier overmantel represents some long-forgotten event that took place in Exeter. While some details, such as the three churches and the domed building in the distance, do correspond with Exeter landmarks (in 1817, Exeter boasted three houses of worship as well as the cupola-crowned Phillips Exeter Academy), the scene is probably not intended to represent any particular place.(1) Rather, the artist has created a composite view of the ideal New England landscape. The large house and neat fields in the left foreground suggest agrarian prosperity, while the village with its churches, civic buildings, and parade of citizens proffers a vision of shared values and community enterprise. The ships, whether merchant or military vessels, underscore New England's ties to a larger world of national and international exchange.

The Currier overmantel remained in situ well into the twentieth century. Gardiner Gilman's two sons lived in the family home until about 1905, and in 1911 it was transferred to a longtime housekeeper, Harriet Tilton. Tilton permitted the nearby Phillips Academy to use the residence as student housing, and at some point the overmantel was removed, probably for safekeeping. The panel eventually found its way into the Exeter Historical Society, which sold it in the early 1970s to pay for the restoration of a local historic property. The overmantel was then acquired by the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth, Texas, where it remained for some thirty years. Deaccessioned and sold at auction early in 2004, it was purchased by the Currier Museum of Art and brought back to New Hampshire. Today it holds a distinguished place among the Museum's outstanding examples of early New England folk painting.

VSD

NOTE

1. See Eliphalet Merrill and Phinehas Merrill, A Gazetteer of the State of New-Hampshire (Exeter, NH: C. Norris and Co., 1817), p. 129.

REFERENCES

James Garvin to Andrew Spahr, January 10, 2004. Copy of e-mail letter contained in object file, Currier Museum of Art.

James Garvin to Peter Hassrick, March 12, 1974. Letter contained in object file, Currier Museum of Art.

Nina Fletcher Little. American Decorative Wall Painting, 1700-1850. New York: E. P. Dutton, 1972.


Exhibition
1976 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, "New England Provincial Painters." June 28 - Nov. 7.

1983 Heritage Plantation of Sandwich, Sandwich, MA, "Images of the Land: 200 Years of Landscape Painting in the Northeastern United States." May 1 - Oct. 20, cat. no. 79.

1989 Currier Gallery of Art, Manchester, NH, "By Good Hands, New Hampshire Folk Art." no. 40.

2010-2011 Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, NH, "The Secret Life of Art: Mysteries of the Museum Revealed." Oct. 2, 2010 – Jan. 9, 2011.

2021 Currier Museum of Art. "Roberto Lugo: Te traigo mi le lo lai - I bring you my joy" May 6 -

Provenance
Painted for the Gardiner Gilman House, Exeter, NH
Removed and transferred to the Gilman-Garrison House, Exeter, NH (administered by the Exeter Historical Society)
Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, NY
Purchased by Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, TX, 1972
Christie's, New York, sale 1279, lot 273, January 16, 2004
Purchased by Currier Museum of Art, 2004


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