Waters-Phelps House decorative fireboard

Date1815-1830

OriginAmerica, Massachusetts, West Sutton

MediumOil on wood (eastern white pine) with iron and paint

Dimensions34 3/4" x 50 1/2" (88.2 cm. x 128.2 cm.)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1956.110.1

DescriptionConstructed of four random width boards which are held together by original battens which are secured by large hand made nails that are driven in from the face and clinched on the back of the batten. There is a painted border in the form of squares. A spongy effect in dark bluish-green is painted very dry on pale cream background. Inside this border is a broad stripe of black. At the bottom is a second board which protudes slightly on the face painted dark red. A fireplace is suggested with red floor paint- ed in receding perspective. Back and sides are in cream, with shaded gray wash to give an effect of slanting light and depth to fireplace. Placed on floor of fireplace is a straight-sided pot with two handles which is outlined in blue and contains a small arrangement of pink blossoms and green leaves knot holes are real and painted.

Artist unidentified.
Label TextDuring the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, fireboards, or "chimneyboards," were often used to close off fireplace openings during warm months of the year when they were not required to provide heat or to prepare food. Fireboards kept birds, insects and debris from entering a house through the chimney, and fireboards were often decorated to for visual appeal. This fireboard was used in the Waters-Phelps House at West Sutton, Massachusetts, and may be the work of the painter who also painted floral motifs and borders on the walls, trompe le oeil dados, and grained woodwork in several rooms in the house (note 1).
Placing an actual vase of flowers in front of or within an unused fireplace was common practice in England and America during the eighteenth century (note 2). In 1723, John Custis of Williamsburg, Virginia, ordered ". . . two pieces of as good painting as you can procure It is to put in ye summer before my chimneys to hide ye fire place. Let them bee some good flowers in potts of various kinds . . . . "(note 3). The painter of this fireboard continued that practice by creating a trompe l'oeil rendering of a vase of flowers before the empty firebox the fireboard was intended to obscure. The illusion is reinforced by trompe l'oeil tin-glazed earthenware tiles painted to resemble actual tiles often used to adorn the perimeter of fireplace openings in other Massachusetts houses (note 4).
ProvenanceLucy Waters Phelps and Charles Phelps, West Sutton, Massachusetts; Robert S. Tompkins, Sheffield, Massachusetts; Nina Fletcher Little, Brookline, Massachusetts.