Lot 1097
  • 1097

Ammi Phillips (1788 - 1865)

Estimate
80,000 - 120,000 USD
bidding is closed

Description

  • Ammi Phillips
  • Pair of Portraits: George Fake (1766-1856) and Catherine Sneider Fake (1770-1852)
  • Oil on canvas
  • Each: 38 by 31 1/2 in.
inscribed on back of respective portraits George Fake, Age 49 years, and 9 months. Nov.16, 1815; Catherine Fake, Age 45 years 5 months - Nov. 16, 1815.

Provenance

George Fake, Jr. (1766-1856) and Catherine Sneider Fake (1770-1852);
Colonel John Snydar Fake (1800-1876) and Mrs. Eliza Warner Fake, Troy, New York;
Augusta Fake McMurray (1834-1894) (Mrs. Alfred Warner MacMurray), Troy, New York;
Charles Bachman McMurray (1865-1940);
Eleanor Beattie McMurray, Troy, New York, until 1950;
Augusta McMurray McLeod, until 1969; by descent in the family;
Hirschl & Adler Galleries, Inc., New York.

Condition

George Fake portrait has minor scrapes, scratches, small amount of flaking in the face and in the background; cleaned and restretched. Catherine Sneider Fake portrait has similar scattered flake and pin-point loss. A 1 in. scratch on extreme right side; cleaned and restretched. Both portraits are relined (wax) with new stretchers, and what appears to be original or period frames.
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.

Catalogue Note

Ammi Phillips’s "Border Period" occurred during the years of 1812-19 while he was working in the border region of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. The pictures from this decade are among the most compelling of his career and are noted for their high level of originality and visionary appearance. They convey the earliest evidence of sophistication and confidence in his work that likely stemmed from his new-found sense of establishment and achievement. In March 1813, Phillips married Laura Brockway of Schodack, New York. The two resided briefly in Nassau, New York, before relocating to Troy, New York, sometime during the next several years. From Troy, Phillips easily covered the New York counties of Rensselaer, Columbia, Dutchess, and Greene, as well as Litchfield, in Connecticut. The present Fake portraits are prime examples of the Border Period, exhibiting the unmistakable characteristics of pearly, pastel tones, light features, rounded forms, and large-scale format. The pale backgrounds and subtle overall tonalism of the Border pictures lends them an often-commented-upon dreaminess or ethereal quality that sets them apart from almost anything being done otherwise in the early nineteenth century. Such rare concern for aestheticism reveals an artist no longer constrained by the difficulties of proportion, shadow, line, and likeness. Both Fake portraits employ similar, if not the same, props, costumes, and poses as other Phillips portraits, particularly those of Joseph and Alsa Slade, dated 1816 at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (see Stacy C. Hollander, Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture, (New York: Museum of American Folk Art, 1994), p. 30, plates X, XI), and Jonathan and Rebecca Rouse Eddy, between 1817-20 in a private collection (see Revisiting Ammi Phillips., p. 32, plates XV, XVI). That Phillips reused the same elements with multiple sitters should not be interpreted as a cursory, impersonal treatment of his subject. Rather, they were a set of conventions the artist utilized as part of an expanding, but still limited, repertoire of familiar accoutrements. As Hollander explains:

Ammi Phillips devised a formula of pose, costume, accessories, and palette that was repeated from canvas to canvas, but few artists exercised their imagination as successfully in recombining these elements into compositions that were endlessly fresh and new. Indeed, one of the remarkable aspects of Phillips paintings is their relationship to one another .... That Phillips relied on both his own and conventional formulas is unquestioned; these formulas, however, did not determine the results, but provided tools he needed to reconceive each painting (Revisiting Ammi Phillips, p. 11).

Though the accessories accompanying a sitter often indicated some aspect of his or her identity, the Bible held by George Fake, in this instance, does not reveal him to be a minister. George Fake was a wealthy farmer and real estate speculator, a Whig and Federalist like his father. George Fake, whose given name was Johan Georg Fake, Jr., was the second of eleven children born to Johan Georg Fake (about 1734-1821) and Maria Elizabeth Lohnes Fake (d. 1806). The Fakes were immigrants from Becherbach, Germany, who ultimately settled in Pittstown in Rensselaer County, New York, and later in nearby Troy, which certainly brought them into contact with the peripatetic Phillips during his Border Period years. In 1787, George Fake married Catherine Sneider. The Fakes were members of the Gilead Lutheran Church, and they are buried in the Oakwood cemetery in Troy.

These portraits of George and Catherine Fake, not previously recorded in the Phillips literature, have remained in the family of the sitters until the present time. Although they are not signed, they are each dated November 16, 1815 on the back of the canvas (now covered by relining) making them unusual and extremely important in documenting Phillips's presence in the Rensselaer County area at that time.