BOSTON, 1750-1760

The "Fishing Lady" needlework pictures made by young girls in Boston around the middle of the eighteenth century have long captured the imagination of scholars and collectors alike. Coined by Helen Bowen in her 1923 article, "The Fishing Lady and Boston Common," this celebrated group of girlhood embroideries includes examples featuring a central female figure with a fishing rod as well as variations upon this theme, such as the representation of a shepherdess or courting couple as seen on the example offered here. Worked predominantly in the tent stitch by young girls in Boston's boarding and day schools, these canvas-work masterpieces drew upon print sources for the individual elements of the design, which were then delightfully placed in a pastoral landscape by the seamstress or her teacher (Helen Bowen, "The Fishing Lady and Boston Common," The Magazine Antiques (August 1923), pp. 70-73; for more related examples see Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework: 1650-1850 (New York, 1993), fig. 45; other articles on "fishing lady" embroideries can be found in The Magazine Antiques in July 1941, December 1941 and June 1944). At the time of its publication in 1944, this needlework was owned by Mrs. Elizabeth Gilman Anderson and had descended from her ancestor, Benjamin Clark Gilman (1763-1835), a merchant and versatile craftsman from Exeter, New Hampshire. Nancy Graves Cabot speculates that it might have been wrought by Jane Tyler (d. 1760), who, she notes, lived on Boston's North Centre Street. Jane Tyler married Joseph Gilman (1738-1823), whose niece, Mary Thing Gilman (1768-1841) married Benjamin Clark Gilman (Nancy Graves Cabot, "Another Needlework Picture," The Magazine Antiques (June 1944), p. 301; additional information provided by Carol and Stephen Huber).