Folk art portrait sculpture

Magazine Antiques, April, 2008 by Megan Holloway Fort

Because of their originality, rarity and great visual interest, the group of twelve three-dimensional polychromed wood portraits the sculptor Asa Ames carved between 1847 and 1851 are among the most important examples of American folk art. They are also some of the most charming. Depicting young men and women and children--Ames's family members, friends, and neighbors in and around the small town of Evans in Erie County, New York--the sculptures are sensitive and intimate portrayals carved in an honest, forthright style.

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An exhibition opening this month at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City brings together eight of the twelve sculptures, providing a unique opportunity to study this small but significant oeuvre. Ames is both a mysterious and a tragic figure. He died from tuberculosis when he was twenty-seven years old, and few other details of his life are known. In fact, the United States census of 1850 is the only known document that records Ames by name.

During the period he was "sculpturing," as his occupation is listed in the census, there was little precedent for portraits in wood, and in the past scholars have usually discussed his work within the genre of trade and ship's figures. The current exhibition aims to reposition Ames's art within a broader framework of sculptural traditions, from Renaissance marble busts to figures by the American neoclassical sculptors Horatio Greenough and Hiram Powers.

The direct simplicity of Head of a Boy (shown at left), the exhibitions curator Stacy C. Hollander argues, relates it more closely to Italian sculpture of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries than to highly embellished wood sculpture in the shipcarving tradition. There is none of the forward thrust typical of figureheads, and no neoclassical draperies shown flowing in a breeze. Likewise, Hollander compares Naked Child (shown at far left) to Renaissance depictions of cherubs and ecclesiastical carvings of the Christ child making a sign of benediction. The portrait may depict LaRay Marvin, a son of Dr. Harvey B. Marvin of Evans, with whom Ames was living in 1850, the year before he died.

There is no catalogue of the exhibition.

Asa Ames: Occupation Sculpturing. American Folk Art Museum, New York City, April 15 to September 14.