Man with Book

Dateca. 1855

Attributed to Ammi Phillips (1788-1865)

OriginAmerica, Mid-Atlantic or New England

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsUnframed: 33 1/2 x 27 1/2in. (85.1 x 69.9cm) and Framed: 38 x 32in.

Credit LineFrom the collection of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Object number1948.100.1

DescriptionA half-length portrait of a man against a dark background. He sits turned one-quarter towards the viewer's right in a red upholstered chair. He wears a black coat with wide lapels, a white shirt with buttons down the front, a stand-up collar, and a black neckcloth tied in a bow at the front of the neck. He holds a book in his proper right hand. His cheeks have a greyish color. He has pale blue eyes, a high forehead with a receding hairline, and dark hair with long sideburns. His book is green with gold lettering.
The 3-inch gilded and gold-painted frame with applied plaster ornament is probably a twentieth-century replacement.
Label TextFluidly and rapidly executed, these paintings bear no trace of the labored appearance and dry, soft shading of Phillip's work during the early 1820s. A lifetime devoted to the skillful handling of his brush is evident in the precision maintained in most critical passages of these likenesses, while the less important areas of the canvas--for example, the chair and sofa arms--are suggested by loose, impressionistic touches of paint. The rather crude, wetly painted blue veining of the hands and the use of pinkish red brushstrokes to outline the knuckles are characteristic touches that Phillips emplyed thoughout his career.
The slight diagonal distortion of the likeness is puzzling; the illusion of a canvas pulled taut between the upper left and lower right corners appears sporadically in Phillips's work after about 1840. Victorian dress proved extremely compatible with many aspects of Phillips's later style. Sober black garb accented by touches of ‚ white provided the stark, graphic settings that advantageously exhibited his sure control of hard edges and crisp facial delineation.

InscribedPainted on the spine of the book in the sitter's hand is "AGRICULT-----".
ProvenanceEdward Duff Balken, Pittsburgh, Pa., and Egremont, Mass.; donated by Balken to the Berkshire Museum, Pittsfield, Mass.; in 1944, purchased from the Berkshire Museum by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller; in 1948, partially-sold, partially-traded to Colonial Williamsburg by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (See the object file for the terms of the transaction).