In the post-Revolutionary era, academies of learning for girls proliferated in the New England landscape. Even so, the education Eunice Griswold Pinney received was rather remarkable for the day, and she was known as “a woman of uncommonly extensive reading.” Pinney’s first marriage ended in divorce. Her second marriage, to Butler Pinney in 1797, proved more stable, and it was at this time—as a mature woman rather than a schoolgirl—that she began to paint the watercolors for which she is remembered today. In this tribute to Reverend Ambrose Todd (1764–1809), the rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Simsbury from 1787 to 1799, Pinney has freely adapted the codified elements of mourning art into an original and personal composition. During his tenure Reverend Todd married the Pinneys.

Todd was inducted into the Morning Star No. 28 Lodge in East Windsor on April 4, 1798. His Masonic affiliation was important to him; his gravestone bears symbols of the fraternal order. Pinney, too, chose to replace the standard plinth, urn, and other mourning symbols with Masonic iconography. The inscription in the spandrel expresses great sorrow at Todd’s passing, not in a stock sentiment but in Pinney’s own hand and language: “The Tribut [sic] of a friend who loved the living and laments the dead.” As Scottish Lodges abhorred conformity and celebrated individuality, this personal testament would have been pleasing to Pinney’s friend.

Stacy C. Hollander, “Masonic Mourning Piece for Reverend Ambrose Todd,” exhibition label for Self-Taught Genius: Treasures from the American Folk Art Museum. Stacy C. Hollander and Valérie Rousseau, curators. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2014.

Eunice Pinney is one of the most well-known female painters of the early nineteenth century. She was raised and educated during the eighteenth century, but her period of artistic activity occurred primarily after her second marriage in 1809, when she was already a mature woman. Pinney was born into the influential Griswold family of Simsbury, Connecticut, and received a remarkable education for a woman of her time. This was largely a consequence of her being permitted to sit in on her brother Alexander’s lessons, received at the hands of their uncle, Roger Viets, himself a Yale graduate and reverend in the Episcopal Church. Pinney was known in her own day as “a woman of uncommonly extensive reading,” and literary themes pervade her watercolors of the first two decades of the nineteenth century. Recent research has revealed that Pinney’s first marriage was an abusive one, and before her first husband, Oliver Holcomb, died by drowning, they had already been divorced. Her second marriage, to Butler Pinney, proved more stable, and it was at this time that she began to paint the remarkable watercolors for which she is remembered today.

This unusual mourning piece commemorates Reverend Ambrose Todd (1764–1809), rector of St. Andrew’s Church in Simsbury and a close personal friend. Reverend Todd took over the parish from Viets in 1787. During the twelve or so years that he officiated at St. Andrew’s, from 1787 to 1799, he married fifty-eight couples, among them the Pinneys in 1797. Todd was made a Mason on April 4, 1798, in Morning Star No. 28 Lodge in East Windsor, Connecticut. His Masonic affiliation was apparently important to him, as Pinney has chosen to replace the standard plinth and urn with a Masonic temple and many basic mourning symbols with Masonic iconography. The inscription in the spandrel expresses great sorrow at Todd’s passing, not in a stock printed inscription but in Pinney’s own hand and original language: “The Tribut of a friend who loved the living and laments the dead.”

Stacy C. Hollander, "Masonic Mourning Piece for Reverend Ambrose Todd," in American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001) 306.