Images(51)

Album of Silhouettes

Date1816-1824

After work by Joseph Sansom (1767 - 1826)

Attributed to Peale Museum

Artist Peale Museum

Compiler Mrs. James Canby (Elizabeth Roberts) (1781 - 1868)

Compiler Mrs. Elizabeth Clifford Morris Canby (1813 - 1892)

OriginAmerica, Delaware, Wilmington (probably)

MediumPaper, ink or watercolor, graphite, and silk swatches in a leather binding

DimensionsOverall (Closed album): 5 1/8 x 6 1/2 x 15/16in. (13 x 16.5 x 2.4cm)

Credit LineGift of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Rumford, II

Object number1982.306.2

DescriptionA small, horizontal-format booklet bound in green leather with gold tooling and lettering. 48 profile portraits, executed on or cut into cream-colored paper, are affixed to various of the album's 80 black paper pages and its back endpaper. The first profile and the last eight are painted in ink or watercolor on paper, the others are hollow-cut. Some album pages have a glossy finish, others matte. (CWF bindery staff speculated, 1984, that the matte finishes were commercially produced, while the glossy finishes derived from oil-based paint applied by an individual.)

N. B. The profiles in the album have been catalogued individually, but this information can be found only in the object file, which see. See "Notes" for an index to the identified subjects.

Artist unidentified.
Label TextBound collections of profile portraits can be viewed as precursors of family photograph albums, convenient, pleasant ways of preserving images of friends and relations for one's own enjoyment and edification and that of future generations. Yet this particular album and a number of others created by Quakers served additional uses as well. During the first third of the nineteenth century, members of the Society of Friends, primarily those living in the Philadelphia area, created albums such as this one to set families and friends within the larger context of their sect, nationality, and time. The inclusion of likenesses of unrelated Quakers and even selected non-Quakers helps illustrate these albums' broader functions as emblems of group identity.
Silhouettes were executed in abundance in the nineteenth century (when they usually were called "shades" or "shadows"), but intact American albums of them are rare. This example incorporates images from the greater Delaware River Valley area. It was compiled by Elizabeth Roberts Canby (1781-1868), with some segments possibly having been added by her daughter-in-law, Elizabeth Clifford Morris Canby (1813-1892). Inscribed names, dates, and statistics of births, deaths, and marriages enhance the collection's value as a socio-historical document.
InscribedOn the primary supports of many of the profiles, there are both ink and pencil inscriptions. The pencil ones seem to have been made about the same time as the profiles (or, at least, describe the subjects at the time the profiles were made). The ink inscriptions were added at a later date. (These deductions had relevance for determining the marital status of some of the female subjects). Please see the object file for a complete transcription of the inscriptions.
MarkingsIn gilt tooled lettering on the album cover is "ELIZABETH CANBY".
Six of the profiles in the album incorporate the blind stamp "MUSEUM" and, four, "PEALE'S MUSEUM".
ProvenanceFrom the compiler, Mrs. James Canby (Elizabeth Roberts)(1781-1868), to her son, Samuel Canby (1811-1875); to his daughter, Mrs. Charles Grubb Rumford (Elizabeth Morris Canby)(1848-1933); to her son, Lewis Rumford (1877-1961); about 1953, to his nephew, Lewis Rumford II (1905-1997), who, with his wife, was AARFAM's donor.