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- 19th Century American Painting
- Ruth Roe Sleight , 1823 - 1825
- oil on canvas
- 29 3/4 in. x 23 3/4 in. (75.57 cm x 60.33 cm)
- Ammi Phillips (Coalbrook, CT, 1788 - 1865, Curtisville (Interlaken), MA)
- American
- Gift of Robert L. Williston in loving memory of his wife Marian J. Williston, descendent of the sitter, 1982.27.2
- Not on View
Interpretive text from Exploring American Art: An Online Resource for the American Collections
Ammi Phillips painted Ruth Roe Sleight (1758-1833) and her husband, Abraham (1755-1842), when they were in their sixties. Prosperous farmers and devout members of the Dutch Reformed Church, the Sleights were descendents of immigrants from Holland. Their forebears were among the first settlers of Dutchess County, New York, and their own ancestral histories were linked with those of the region. Abraham served three enlistments with the Dutchess County militia during the Revolutionary War and subsequently became an important landholder in the county. He married Ruth Roe in 1782; she bore eight children. They were a part of the local gentry of the town of Fishkill, and like many of their neighbors they were willing to pay Ammi Phillips's not inconsiderable charge of twenty dollars per pair to be commemorated in a style that was the height of fashion among rural New Yorkers.
Phillips was a Connecticut-born portrait painter who traveled extensively throughout western Connecticut and Massachusetts and along the Hudson River in New York State during his more than fifty-year career. The paintings of the Sleights exemplify Phillips's realistic manner of the 1820s-a period in which his ability to model facial features came closest to academic standards, and in which he began to subordinate the more decorative aspects of his portraits, such as showy accessories and colorful costumes, to a careful rendering of hands and face. Phillips's sitters often appear quite somber; to the modern eye, his realism can seem harsh and unflattering. In his portrait of Mrs. Sleight, Phillips even included a cyst or wen on the subject's mouth. The Sleights are shown at waist length (a format that by about 1820 had come to be preferred to the old-fashioned three-quarter-length view) and facing one another, but with their heads turned slightly to address the viewer. They are seated in matching fancy painted side chairs, with faux graining and gilt striping on the stiles, a furniture style that was newly fashionable in provincial areas during the 1820s. As is typical of Phillips's portraits during this period, the Sleights are posed against muted backgrounds and dressed in sober-colored costumes that are nonetheless rendered with careful attention to detail: Abraham's stock is crisply painted, and Ruth's lace cap is delicately translucent. Each holds a prop intended as a clue to a character trait: Abraham's fingers mark his place in the "Scott's Bible Gen Jos Vol I," as though the viewer interrupted his study of Scripture. Ruth holds a pair of knitting needles and a ball of wool, tokens of domestic industry meant to suggest that she was never idle.
During his sojourn in the Fishkill area, Phillips painted a number of other Sleight relations: Abraham's brother John, also of Fishkill; John's wife, Aeltie; and their daughter Sarah Ann, who married into the prosperous De Witt family, many of whose members Phillips also painted. (A number of these paintings are owned by the Senate House State Historical Site, Kingston, New York.) Like the portraits of the Sleights, these pictures are unadorned but are at the same time carefully conceived images that convey the social status of these country squires: sitting in new Hitchcock or other fancy chairs, in stylish costumes, with appropriate books and needlework, their virtue is proclaimed to be unimpeachable, their social position secure. Just as in the 1760s Copley dominated portrait painting in New England and forged an image of the nobility sitting in high-style Chippendale chairs and wearing fine silks and velvets, fingering exotic blossoms or consulting ponderous ledgers, in the 1820s Phillips became the painter to the well-to-do of Dutchess County. His portraits of the Sleights form part of the documentation for understanding a provincial dynasty and interpreting its cultural aspirations.
CT
REFERENCE
Mary Black. "Ammi Phillips, Portrait Painter," in Stacy C. Hollander and Howard P. Fertig, Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture. Ex. cat. Museum of American Folk Art, New York, 1994. P. 72.’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’’
The information presented here is reviewed regularly and may change as result of ongoing research.
