Rare Embroidered and Painted Silk Picture

Private Collection, Boston, Massachusetts;

Sotheby's, New York, Important American Schoolgirl Embroideries: The Landmark Collection of Betty Ring, January 22, 2012, sale 8832, lot 528.

Betty Ring, American Needlework Treasures: Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection of Betty Ring at the Museum of American Folk Art, (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1987), p. 73, fig. 119.

Three other pieces from the Saunders and Beach Academy portray this scene, but none have retained such brilliant colors. Although found unframed, this embroidery was evidently "strained" in preparation for framing (for which John Doggett usually charged fifty cents), and space was left for an inscribed glass mat. It descended in the Everett family, and on December 18, 1805, a "Mr. Everett of Boston" paid Doggett $4.67 for " 1 embroidery frame" and $4.00 for " 1 glass with enamelling" possibly for this needlework (John Doggett's ledger, Joseph Downs Manuscript Collection, Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum, Winterthur, Delaware). If it was, indeed, framed, the unfaded silk reveals that it was displayed but briefly.