John Usher Parsons (1806 - 1874)

Found in a Hobbs family home, Effingham, New Hampshire;
Collection of James Flexner, New York;
Christie’s, New York, Property from the Estate of James Thomas Flexner, January 15-16, 2004, lot 343.

Museum of American Folk Art, New York, Collector’s Choice, September 1969;
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The China Trade and Its Influence in Europe and America.

Illustrated and discussed in James Flexner, History of American Paintings Volume Two: The Light of Distant Skies, 1760-1835, fig. 92;
Illustrated and discussed in James Flexner, Maverick’s Progress;
Illustrated and discussed in Ralph and Susanne Katz, “In Search of John Usher Parsons,” in Folk Art, American Folk Art Museum, Spring 2005;
Frances McQueeney-Jones Mascolo, "Beyond Tradition: A Folk Art Collection in New Hampshire," Antiques & Fine Art, vol. VII, issue 2, Summer/Autumn 2006, p. 138.

Backed with paper and on an older stretcher (the painting was discovered rolled up in a trunk in the Hobbs family home), approximately 7 inch thin line with inpainting running vertically through her proper right shoulder, craquelure, with some lifting of the paint in her face. Antique mahogany-veneered frame, 37 by 29 inches.
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Discovered rolled up in a trunk in a Hobbs family home, this portrait of Sarah F. Hobbs (1801-1884) is one of a small number of works by Parsons between 1834 and 1838, while he was recuperating from an illness. He grew up in in the Parsonsfield-Effingham area of New Hampshire, trained as both a medical doctor and a minister, and prior to his recuperation, traveled widely as a missionary, primarily in the Midwest. Once healthy, he returned to his transient life.

The present portrait of Hobbs, though unsigned, is stylistically consistent with the known, signed works by Parsons, particularly in the linear execution and the blushed cheeks. Moreover, Hobbs, who never married and lived in Effingham her entire life, was related to the artist by marriage. 

Noted collector James Flexner suggested that by painting this portrait on unstretched fabric and storing it rolled, in the same manner of Chinese ancestor portraits, Parsons was drawing upon the influence of the China trade through the port of Portsmouth.