Moses B. Russell: Yankee miniaturist

Magazine Antiques, Nov, 2002 by Randall L. Holton, Charles A. Gilday

(4.) Grafton [New Hampshire] County Journal, February 6, 1884. The newspaper is in error by ten years when it states that Peletiah drowned "about sixty-five years ago."

(5.) As one example of the difficulty of ascertaining information about his mother, Russell's own death record in the 1884 Boston Vital Records (vol. 357, p. 27, no. 726 [Massachusetts Archives, Boston]) lists Peletiah as his father but gives no name for his mother. It does, however, indicate that both his father and mother were born in Woodstock, New Hampshire.

(6.) The digits of the year inscribed on the backing are difficult to decipher because of paper loss, but close examination of the numerals, along with stylistic considerations of the work, strongly suggest the date 1829 as the only possibility.

(7.) Edward Odiorne's father was James Creighton Odiorne (1802-1879). For more information on the elder Odiorne, see A Biographical Sketch of the Class of 1826, Yale College, comp. Selden Haines (Utica, New York, 1866): see also lames Creighton Odiorne, Genealogy of the Odiome Family...(Boston, 1875). We are indebted to Anne E. Bentley, cataloguer of visual materials and curator of the art collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, for providing background information and sources about the Odiorne family.

(8.) Boston Daily Evening Transcript, February 22, 1834.

(9.) See, for example the Boston Daily Colombian Centinel, June 24, 1835, and the Boston Courier, June 23, 1835.

(10.) We wish to thank Lyn O'Callaghan, director of publications at the New Hampton School, and William N. Copelcy. librarian at the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord, for locating Sumner Russell as a student at New Hampton, Apparently, the school had strong ties to Boston, for two visiting Englishmen, Francis Augustus Cox (1783-1853) and James Hoby (1788-1871). noted in The Baptists in America...(New York, 1836; p. 360). "The institution has been much patronized by the city of Boston."

(11.) See Leah Lipton, "The Boston Artists' Association, 1841-1851," American Art Journal, vol. 15, no. 4 (Autumn 1983), pp. 45-57. A partial roster of members, which includes Russell's signature and entry, is illustrated on p. 45.

(12.) Daily Evening Transcript, January 18, 1838. The letter writer is identified simply as "S.T."

(13.) Note that in his portrait The Romantic Mourner (P1. VIII) Russell adopts a dreamy pose highly reminiscent of some of Malbone's miniatures as well as the early work of Malbones' pupil Anson Dickinson (1779-1852).

(14.) The advertisement reads: "A CARD./M.B. RUSSELL,.MINIATURE PAINTER,/21, School Street, Boston."

(15.) Frederic Alan Sharf, "Art and Life in Boston, 1837 to 1850: A Study of the Painter and Sculptor in American Society," p. 105, a typewritten manuscript submitted in 1956 as a Harvard college honors thesis (copy in the Bostonian Society).

(16.) Phoebe Lloyd, "Posthumous Mourning Portraiture," in A Time to Mourn: Expressions of Grief in Nineteenth Century America, ed. Martha V. Pike and Janice Gray Armstrong (Museums at Stony Brook, New York, 1980), p. 85.