POSIBLY THE SHOP OF THOMAS S. RENSHAW WITH PAINTWORK BY JOHN BARNHART, BALTIMORE, CIRCA 1815

With a romantic landscape set within an oval reserve and distinctive "button"-turned feet, aspects of this card table relate closely to a settee now in the Baltimore Museum of Art signed by cabinetmaker Thomas S. Renshaw and paint decorator John Barnhart. In contrast to the work ascribed to the shop of John and Hugh Finlay, Baltimore's more well-known makers of fancy furniture of this time, the painted scenes on this card table and the signed settee depict naturalistic, rural settings instead of the grand mansions that feature in the Finlay forms. While William Voss Elder III and Jayne E. Stokes have argued that those on the settee were probably painted by an outside specialist, the surrounding giltwork with accurate shadowing in black is similar on both forms and suggests that both were ornamented by Barnhart. Barnhart may have worked for several cabinetmakers, but the turned detailing on the feet of this table and the signed settee are an uncommon feature, which strongly indicates that these forms were made in the same shop. Renshaw was working in Baltimore by 1811 and in 1816, moved to Ohio, providing a short time-frame for the production of the table offered here. For more on these craftsmen and related examples, see William Voss Elder and Jayne E. Stokes, American Furniture, 1660-1880 from the Collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 61-62, cat. 41. For a card table of similar form, with the same shaping to the top, use of mahogany on the top leaf and cylindrical cuffs, see William Voss Elder III, Baltimore Painted Furniture 1800-1840 (Baltimore, 1972), p. 40, cat. 17.