Mrs. John Watson
Artist
Ralph Earl
(American, 1751 - 1801)
Date1791
MediumOil on canvas, with an original frame
DimensionsOverall: 68 1/4 x 54 3/8in. (173.4 x 138.1cm)
ClassificationsPAINTINGS
Credit LineProctor Collection
Terms
Object numberPC. 42
Description On View
Not on viewCollections
CopyrightNo known copyright restrictions.
Label TextThis portrait and, presumably, its accompanying frame descended to the sitter's great-grandson, James Watson Williams. In 1850 he and his wife, Helen Elizabeth Munson, began construction of the home that in the 1870s would be called Fountain Elms. A photograph in the Museum's collection, showing the interior of Fountain Elms around 1910-20, shows this portrait in the dining room at Fountain Elms hanging in what was probably this frame.
In contrast to the kind of frame that would become fashionable in 19th-century America, the wooden vertical stiles and horizontal rails were not decorated with composition ornament but, instead, support strips of molding that were shaped with a plane. A length of wood with a raised section is called a bolection molding. This molding style was popular in European interior design and decorative arts in the late-17th and early-18th centuries. Bolection moldings were also used in America during the 18th century. Assuming this frame is the picture's original, its bolection style shape may reflect the taste of the artist, whose conservative painting style appealed to such Connecticut River Valley patrons as the venerable Mrs. Watson.
Although the three, delicately cut parallel reeds that make up its inner sight edge may originally have been gilded, the center cove and the outer edge (which is comprised of one large reed, or "astragal," on top of a slightly larger flat section, or "fillet") probably were originally ebonized, as they appear now. The black sections of the frame harmonize nicely with Mrs. Watson's dress and black-trimmed bonnet.
Paul D. Schweizer
August 2010
