The Town Meeting House
Pastel and goauche on grid paper, 12-7/8 x 15-1/8 in. (32.6 x 38.2 cm), in a gilt and painted frame in American 19th century style, 22-1/4 x 25 x 4 in. overall. The paper is ruled in grids (22 x 21 mm) of 10 by 10 squares and is laid down on backing board. Two vertical lines of abrasion, staining and foxing; discrete water spotting in lower left quadrant; clean 25 mm tear in upper left edge; slight wear along framing lines.
The flat, frontal, linear composition, the patterned realism and the restrained
palette of this American naïve painting may place it just before or
after the beginning of the 19th century. The two-storey, three-window-bay,
el-layout main house with English basement and center-chimneyed shallow
gable roof is fairly representative of a type of town architecture of the
period, as are the windows, overlit doors and shingle-and-clapboard siding.
Here is a Union House, likely a multi-functional meeting house for civic
gatherings and worship services of one or more congregations. The right-hand,
green-painted single door gives access to a curtained upstairs home, and
the addition of the market on the left with shed expansion above bolsters
the substantiality of the edifice, to all appearances a key building facing
a central road or green in a significant town. The composition is drawn
on 10 x 10 grid paper which is survives in manuscript surveys of the 18th
century. The most telling clue to dating this composition is the American
flag with its circle of 12 stars surrounding a 13th, and 17 stripes (nine
red, eight white on the more precise inside edge adjacent the flagpole).
This flag may signify the period of 17 states after the admission of Ohio
in 1803 and before the next admission, Louisiana in 1812, and perhaps also
a locality in one of the original 13 states.
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Price: $4,500
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