Ruth Whittier Shute and Samuel Addison Shute (1803-1882), (1803-1836)

Inscribed recto, on letter, ink: Mifs Mary Ann Russell/ LoweII/Mafs; 6 [postage] / Boston 1828 Nov 4 [postmark].  Together with a needlework sampler worked by Mary Ann Russell, in silk on linen (7 3/16  by 6 1/8  in.).  2 pieces.

Professor North, Clinton, New York
Don H. and Barbara Ladd, Hampton, Connecticut
Esther Schwartz, Patterson, New Jersey
The Ladds, 1983
Marjorie Schorsch, Greenwich, Connecticut, as agent, 1983

Kellogg, Helen, "Found: Two Lost American Painters," Antiques World 1, no. 2 (December 1978): 41
American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, p. 55, fig. 26

In a period veneered frame. Repaired tear above the head at center (approximately 3 inches); repair at extreme lower left hand corner; rough edge at bottom.
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Mary Ann Russell was a young mill worker who later, according to Lowell bank records, became a mantua maker, or garment maker. A sampler she made as a child has descended along with this portrait, which is the earliest dated work by Samuel Addison and Ruth Whittier Shute to have yet been discovered. The picture introduces some of the stylistic elements that would later become distinctive trademarks of their mature work, and it is the first of a number of watercolors of women in which the sitter holds a card identifying herself.

The subjects of two pictures with compositional elements that place them earlier, Sarah Ann Drew and Sarah Fuller, are identified on cartouches that appear in an upper corner and stand out against a dark background.¹ This pair can be grouped with other very early watercolors with opaque backgrounds painted in a range of grays and gray-browns. Although Russell is painted in the small-size format that characterizes this group, her background is the first known example showing a translucent watercolor treatment. The artists would develop the vertical brushstrokes seen in her portrait into a distinctive diagonal-striped effect in which the color is keyed to the tones used in rendering the figure, from whom the background appears to radiate. It is this background that appears regularly in the larger portraits that form the body of work from the early 1830S for which the Shutes are best known.

Russell's likeness also introduces more dramatic design elements within the figure that appear regularly in the later work. White gouache is boldly applied to her bodice, and it creates arresting contrasts to the rich sienna background, the elaborately contoured black dress, and the exposed paper on which the facial features are densely but sensitively penciled. The Shutes' ability to capture subtle nuances of personality in their portraits is nowhere more evident than in the poignance, modesty, and moving integrity that is uncannily projected in the likeness of this very impressive young woman. -H.K. & S.K.

¹ The portrait of Sarah Ann Drew is illustrated in Museum of Fine Arts, M.& M. Karolik Collection, vol. 2, p. 105. The portrait of Sarah Fuller is in a private collection.