The Carver Limner

Inscribed verso, ink on paper note: Mr. Carver: Barnabus Bartol Carver/Born in Freeport Maine/5/26-1799-D—[?]; Mrs. Carver: Mary Coffin Carver /B 1801-D. Freeport d.1873 / Married Barnabas Carver / B. 1799-Freeport 1873 / Parents of Frances Ann Carver; Frances Ann: Daughter of / Barnabus B. and Mary C. …  Carver / Frances Ann—B 1832—D. 1920

Bearing watermarks: Mr.  Carver: WHATMAN/TURKEY MILL (Maidstone, Kent, England); Mrs. Carver and Frances Ann: J. WHATMAN, 1827 (Maidstone, Kent, England)

Descended in family to Minerva K. Warner, Freeport, Maine
Richard L. Mills, Exeter, New Hampshire
Kennedy Galleries, New York
Marvin and Jill Baten, White Plains, New York, 1995
David A. Schorsch, New York, New York

"American Radiance: Highlights of the Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum," de Menil Gallery at Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, October 15-December 15, 2002
"Surface Attraction: Painted Furniture from the American Folk Art Museum," New York, American Folk Art Museum, September 20, 2005-March 26, 2005

American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum, pp. 48-49, figs. 19A-C

Mother: tiny losses at edges; All with horizontal creases along the bottom.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

The name of the artist who portrayed three members of the Carver family of Freeport, Maine, remains unknown, although a small body of work is now attributed to his hand. Identified simply as the Carver Limner, the artist is responsible for at least two additional portraits.¹ Barnabas Bartol Carver (1799-?) married Mary Coffin (1800/1-1873) in 1826. Both were descended from prominent Freeport families. Like his father and grandfather before him, Barnabas was a farmer but is also remembered in family history as a lawyer.² His family may also have been involved as merchants in coastal shipping and possibly local shipbuilding as well. The Carvers had several children, but Frances Ann (1832-1920) seems to have been the only child to survive into adulthood. In 1859 she married William Pote Kendall. The portraits remained in the family through the 1970s.³

The Carver family portraits share several eccentricities that suggest the artist may have been trained as a furniture maker and/or decorative painter.⁴ The unusual background is strongly reminiscent of surface treatments typically applied to boxes and case furniture to simulate woodgrain patterns and other decorative effects.⁵ A sculpted quality informs all three portraits; this is especially evident in the deeply modeled pleats of Mr. Carver's stock and the treatment of fingers, like stacked dowels. The faces themselves seem almost gouged from wood and show a reliance on heavy outlining and a hard-edged, architectural approach. Repeated motifs, such as the leaflike designs on Mr. Carver's vest and the scarf draped over the back of the Windsor chair in Mrs. Carver's portrait, evoke associations with colonial furniture forms such as Hadley chests, whose low-relief carved decoration was made with the aid of templates.

All three portraits are bordered on three sides with bold black strokes in a pattern of alternating triangles. The full-length portrait of Frances Ann also has the additional feature of a bottom border that simulates bamboo, as is seen in decorated chairs of this period. Mr. and Mrs. Carver are both seated and depicted waist-length; their portraits do not face each other in the more usual convention. Neither exhibits the exaggerated proportions—long arms, tiny pet—that accentuate the activity of the cat and mouse in Frances Ann's portrait. ⁶ -S.C.H.

¹ Dorothy Drinkwater Rees, letter to Freeport Historical Society, April 17, 1989 (AFAM files). Rees, a direct descendant of the Carver family, refers to a portrait of Dorcas Coffin Stubbs—sister of Mary Coffin Carver—that she inherited and which was on view at MFA in 1989. My gratitude to Sue Welsh Reed, MFA, for providing a photocopy of this painting. A portrait by the same artist of an unidentified man, possibly a Mr. Thissele, is illustrated in David A. Schorsch, Masterpieces from Two Distinguished Private Collections (New York: David A. Schorsch, 1995), pp. 8-9. In the catalog entry, Schorsch suggests there are as many as nine portraits that can be attributed to the Carver Limner but does not enumerate them.
² Rees, letter to Freeport Historical Society.
³ I am grateful to Randall Wade Thomas, Freeport Historical Society, for providing biographical information about the Carver family and their descendants.
⁴ Rees, letter to Freeport Historical Society; family tradition has it that the portraits were painted by a New York artist who spent a summer on one of the islands off the coast of Maine.
⁵ The watercolor wash in the backgrounds was actually manipulated while wet with a material such as putty to create the grained patterning in exactly the same manner that furniture would have been decorated.
⁶ The last family owner, Minerva K. Warner, was a doll maker, and she fashioned a doll—which remains with a descendant—after the one held in Frances Ann's hand.