AMMI PHILLIPS; OLD WOMAN WITH A BIBLE

Old Woman with a Bible

AMMI PHILLIPS: OLD

WOMAN WITH A BIBLE

by Joan K. Yanni

The discovery and purchase of Old Woman with a Bible (84.22) was a coup for the curatorial department.  The painting was found in nearby Caledonia during the summer of 1984, and officially acquired by the Gallery in the fall.

The subject of the portrait is unidentified, but the portrait was probably painted in the early 1830s when the artist was working in the New York-Connecticut area. For more information, see Memorial Art Gallery: An Introduction to the Collection, page 179.

 (from Antiques Magazine, November, 1989)

Ammi Phillips' work was known long before his name.  In 1924 a group of unsigned portraits of Connecticut residents, all dating from about the mid-1830s, was displayed in Kent, Connecticut.  The artist was named the Kent Limner.  By the mid 1950s, another group of paintings, dating from about 1812 to 1819, had been isolated and called the work of the Border Limner because they were of subjects who lived in a narrow area on either side of the New York-Massachusetts border.

In 1958, after collectors Barbara and Lawrence Holdridge bought a portrait dated 1840 and signed Ammi Phillips, they began to study the painter.  Years later the Holdridges organized a major exhibition of more than seventy Phillips portraits at the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City.  Through their study of iconography, style, and subject, they established that Phillips was both the Kent and the Border Limner.  The list of paintings by or attributable to him in their catalog ran to 309 entries.  Today a register of the artist's work would include more than 500 canvasses—all portraits.