Winter 2016

Winter 164 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com Pictorial Sampler, 1821. Mary B. Danforth (1807–1848, Manchester, Massachusetts). Silk embroidery on red- dyed linen, 16¾ x 15¾ in. Collection of Jane and Gerald Katcher. Two years before she made the mourning picture that is also included in this exhibition, Mary Danforth created this equally distinctive and imaginative sampler worked in silk on linen that had been dyed a deep rich red. Samplers like Danforth’s that were produced in the female academies founded after the Revolutionary War turned from religious to domestic themes, and many depicted the school buildings in which they were made. Christopher Columbus Landing Upon the Island of San Salvador, 1820–1825, artist unidentified, probably New England. Watercolor on paper, 20½ x 15¾ in. Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown, New York, Gift of Stephen C. Clark, Jean and Howard Lipman Collection (N0091.1961). Scenes like this were often painted as aides to the study of American history. The central image was probably taken from a print source, which the student surmounted with a pair of American flags and the Great Seal of the United States. The front of the seal, which was adopted in 1782, features a spread-winged bald eagle holding an olive branch in its proper right or dexter talon, thirteen arrows in its sinister (proper left) talon, and a scroll bearing the motto E pluribus unum in its beak.