Nancy Ellis Brewster
View of Mount Vernon

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • View of Mount Vernon
Datec. 1805–1810
Made inPlymouth, Massachusetts, United States
MediumSilk and watercolor
Dimensions12 1/2 × 16 3/4 in. (31.8 × 42.5 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg
Object numberB.54.15
Not on view

Explore Further

Department
Bayou Bend
Object Type
Description

On March 31, 1800, Francis Jukes (1747–1812) issued an aquatint engraving in London that was to inspire a variety of adaptations by needleworkers and amateur painters. The print, Mount Vernon in Virginia / The seat of the late Lieut. General George Washington, was made after a drawing by Alexander Robertson (1772–1841). The embroidered and painted picture at Bayou Bend was presumably a project at a school like Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts, or Misses Patten’s School, Hartford, Connecticut. It was worked by Plymouth, Massachusetts, resident Nancy Ellis Brewster, probably between 1805 and 1810.

Technical notes: Tabby-weave silk ground; silk chenille embroidery threads. The needlework is executed in satin and couching stitches and has been mounted in an inscribed frame. Details have been painted in watercolor on the silk ground.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.


Provenance[Ginsburg & Levy, Inc., New York]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1954; given to MFAH.
Exhibition History

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
Inscriptions in ink on backboard: "Plymouth Mass January 1st (?) 1856 (?) This is presented to Mrs. Betsey J. Strong Ellis B. Brimhall Witness”

Inscribed, painted on glass of frame: Washington Seat, Mount Vernon / Wrought by Nancy E. Brewster
[no marks]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

If you have questions about this work of art or the MFAH Online Collection please contact us.

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