Property from the Estate of James Thomas Flexner Few scholars have had as great an impact on American history as James Thomas Flexner (1908-2003). Flexner was a prolific writer who explored such wide-ranging subjects as American art, medicine, politics and commerce. Flexner wrote a total of 26 books in his career, all of which are still in print, and it was his pioneering studies of American art that helped to establish the subject as an academic specialty. But it was his prize-winning four-volume biography of George Washington that garnered him the most acclaim. In that work, Flexner gracefully recounted the story of Washington's life and succeeded in demystifying Washington's historical presence. Flexner's contribution to American letters will not be forgotten, and his acute taste for Americana helped drive that field towards academic legitimacy and international historical importance.

AMERICAN SCHOOL, circa 1830

Portrait of Sarah Hobbs(1801-1884), Effingham, New Hampshire

細節

AMERICAN SCHOOL, circa 1830
Portrait of Sarah Hobbs(1801-1884), Effingham, New Hampshire
oil on canvas
32½ x 24¾in.

出版

Illustrated and discussed in Flexner, History of American Painting Volume Two, New York, 1969, p. 210, fig. 92

Illustrated and discussed in Flexner, Maverick's Progress, New York, 1996. illustrated opposite pg 325

展覽

New York, Museum of American Folk Art,Collectors Choice, September-November 1969.

New York, The Metropoloitan Museum of Art, The China Trade and its Influence in Europe and America,1941.

拍品專文

This portrait of Sarah Hobbs is illustrated in Flexner's History of American Painting Volume Two: The Light of Distant Skies where he also discusses this work. Flexner states :
About 1830, the painter of Sahrah Hobbs joined the Stuart (simple) conceptions, as the primitives practiced them, with the techniques of Chinese ancestor portraits. For a plain background, he left untoched a piece of green window-shade material, using it as the Orientals used silk. In flat colors, he placed a decorative body below a facde so realistically conceived, despite the distoritions of naive vision...The result was not varnished or stretched, but kept rolled up in the Chinese manner. The only explanation of this strangely powerful portrait is the road connecting the Hobbs's New Hampshire farm with Portsmouth, whence sailors traveled around the Horn."

Sarah Hobbs is buried in the grave yard on the Hobbs family property in Effingham, New Hampshire. She died November 8, 1884 at the age of 83 years, 28 days. (born September 30, 1801).