Erastus Salisbury Field (American, 1805-1900)

Portrait of Hannah Eells Palmer
oil on canvas
35 1/4 x 27 inches.

Hannah Eells Palmer (1804-1881) was the fourth of eight children born in Stonington, Connecticut to Abigail Davis and Lemuel Palmer. On February 15, 1824, she married her cousin Paul Smith Palmer (1796 -1875), the son of Revolutionary War general Roswell Saltonstall Palmer, and moved to her new husband’s home in Stockbridge, Berkshire County, Massachusetts. According to federal census agricultural schedules, Paul Smith Palmer owned 190 acres of land in Stockbridge, where he raised cattle, sheep, and swine, and cultivated corn and oats, cumulatively valued at $8,363 in 1860.[1] Palmer was purportedly an “honest, upright man and highly esteemed by all who knew him.”[2] The couple had nine children, though only three lived to see adulthood.

Two of the Palmer children, twins Emma and Charles, were painted along with their mother in another portrait of Hannah Eells Palmer executed by Erastus Salisbury Field during the mid-to-late 1830s. Field painted a pendant portrait of Paul Smith Palmer, and both works are part of the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The portrait offered here is slightly smaller and was likely painted prior to the pair in Washington, given the expansive breadth of the gigot sleeves and the elaborately curled hairstyle Eells Palmer wore. Sleeves of women’s dresses began to widen in the late 1820s and reached an apex between 1830 and 1833, after which their size began to shrink. Similarly, women’s hairstyles grew simpler and sleeker by the middle of the decade.[3]

[1] 1860 US census, Stockbridge, Berkshire County, Massachusetts, non-population schedule, Ancestry.com. U.S., Selected Federal Census Non-Population Schedules, 1850-1880 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2010. Archive Collection Number: T1204; Roll: 11; Page: 9; Line: 40; Schedule Type: Agriculture.

[2] Albert Henry Davis, History of the Davis family. Being an account of the descendants of John Davis, a native of England, who died in East Hampton, Long Island, in 1705. With notices of individuals and families connected with them. Brought down to 1886-7 (New York City, New York: T.A. Wright, 1888), 24.

[3] Penelope Byrde, Nineteenth Century Fashion (London: Batsford, 1992), 39.

Provenance:

Edith Gregor Halpert, The Downtown Gallery, New York;

Terry Dintenfass, New York;

Gerald Kornblau, New York;

Anonymous Sale, Sotheby’s, New York, 29 April 1982, Lot 9;

Christie's, New York, 29 September 2010, Lot 59;

Christie's, New York, 21 June 2011, Lot 183.