Mourning Piece for Sarah Elizabeth Burnham1831–1832Sheet: 15 5/8 x 19 " (39.7 x 48.3 cm)
Frame: 21 3/8 x 25 x 1 " (54.3 x 63.5 x 2.5 cm)Watercolor, gouache, pencil and ink on paper, with applied gold foilGift of Ralph Esmerian2013.1.1201547814011P1.2001.252013.24.132013.24.12Samuel A. ShuteRuth W. ShuteDrawingsThe American Folk Art Museum believes this work to be in the public domain.On plinth, pen and ink: SACRED / TO THE / MEMORY OF / SARAH ELIZABETH / DAUGHTER OF JOSIAH C. AND ABIGAIL S. BURNHAM WHO / died Dec. 24th 1830. et. two years 7 months,/ "Sure to the mansions of the blest / When infant innocence ascends, / Some angel brighter than the rest, / The spotlefs spirits light attends.Labels on back: No. 427 frame . No. 63274 frame / Shute mourning / Esmerian / m093879-1bLowellLowellUnited StatesMassachusettsWorks on PaperLowellHelen Kellogg, "Found: Two Lost Painters," Antiques World, Volume I, Number 2 (December 1978) 43.
Jean Lipman and Tom Armstrong, eds., American Folk Painters of Three Centuries (New York: Hudson Hills Press, Inc., in association with the Whitney Museum of American Art, 1980) 169.Central stepped plinth with inscription and urn with flame finial, wreath of roses extending down either side. Mrs. Burnham in mourning attitude leaning on plinth, dressed in clack. Large willow tree over figure and plinth, landscape beyond with evergreen RS. Below, small buildings drawn with straight edge: houses LS, church RS with gold paper collaged
cock and ball on steeple. Path leading from church to house.
In black molded frame. Theorem-like pink rose between plinth
and church.The Burnhams’ young daughter, Sarah, died Christmas Eve, 1830. Ruth Shute herself lost her own daughter four weeks later, nine days after the birth. In this mourning piece, Mrs. Burnham’s figure leans on her daughter’s tomb in an attitude of grief, her face lined with marks of her suffering. The event might account for the somber aspect of her portrait painted by the Shutes within the next year or two. Although childhood mortality rates were high in the early nineteenth century, there was a special sorrow associated with the death of an innocent child, as indicated by the lines of poetry on the tomb and the fallen rose. Commissioning the mourning piece along with their own portraits and that of their son enabled the Burnhams to keep their infant daughter’s memory alive as one of the family in the age before photography.
Stacy C. Hollander, “Mourning Piece for Sarah Elizabeth Burnham,” 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.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgP1.2001.252013.24.132013.24.1218311832 2013 1 12 Central stepped plinth with inscription and urn with flame finial, wreath of roses extending down either side. Mrs. Burnham in mourning attitude leaning on plinth, dressed in clack. Large willow tree over figure and plinth, landscape beyond with evergreen RS. Below, small buildings drawn with straight edge: houses LS, church RS with gold paper collaged
cock and ball on steeple. Path leading from church to house.
In black molded frame. Theorem-like pink rose between plinth
and church.The Burnhams’ young daughter, Sarah, died Christmas Eve, 1830. Ruth Shute herself lost her own daughter four weeks later, nine days after the birth. In this mourning piece, Mrs. Burnham’s figure leans on her daughter’s tomb in an attitude of grief, her face lined with marks of her suffering. The event might account for the somber aspect of her portrait painted by the Shutes within the next year or two. Although childhood mortality rates were high in the early nineteenth century, there was a special sorrow associated with the death of an innocent child, as indicated by the lines of poetry on the tomb and the fallen rose. Commissioning the mourning piece along with their own portraits and that of their son enabled the Burnhams to keep their infant daughter’s memory alive as one of the family in the age before photography.
Stacy C. Hollander, “Mourning Piece for Sarah Elizabeth Burnham,” 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.
Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information.
To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.org