Mrs. Moses B. Russell Boston miniaturist - Bibliography

Magazine Antiques, Dec, 1999 by Randall L. Holton, Charles A. Gilday

As interest in portrait imniature painting was waning in the 1840s with the rapid ascendancy of the daguerreotype, there emerged in Boston an artist of uncommon talent who produced a remarkable and distinctive group of children's portraits. That these watercolors on ivory still retain their delicate intensity and ethereal magic for modern viewers is a tribute to the skill of Mrs. Moses B. Russell, whose work is still largely unidentified or, worse, misattributed to either her husband or the itinerant portraitist Joseph Whiting Stock (1815--1855). Although Mrs. Russell rarely signed her pieces, the distinguishing characteristics of her work make it readily possible to identify her hand. With identification will surely come the recognition that she deserves a prominent place in any account of American folk art.

When Mrs. Russell died in 1854, after being seized by violent seasickness on a steamer returning from Bangor, Maine, her obituary was front-page news in Boston. [1] Although the Boston Evening Transcript proclaimed that she was "well known as a miniature painter of considerable reputation," [2] her early years and artistic training remain a mystery. She was born Clarissa Peters in the Massachusetts town now known as North Andover, situated twenty-four miles north of Boston, in February 1809, [3] the fifth of twelve children born to Elizabeth Farrington Davis and John Peters. The Peters family had been prominent in local affaris for generations, and her father served as chairman of the board of selectmen. Clarissa most likely attended Franklin Academy, the first incorporated institution in Massachusetts to admit young ladies, and the same school her younger sister Emily attended from 1836 to 1838. [4] Another sister, Sarah Peters Grozelier (1821-1907), also became a miniature painter. In 1839 Clarissa Peters was married to the miniaturist Moses Baker Russell (1809-1884) in Providence, Rhode Island. They had one son, Albert Cuyp Russell (1839-1917), who became a wood engraver. [5]

Clarissa Russell's earliest known artistic undertaking was an exquisitely decorated friendship album [6] that resides with other family papers at the North Andover Historical Society. The album, with entries dating from 1829 to 1832, is festooned with twenty-two delicate floral and foliate vignettes executed in watercolor (see Pls. I, V), reflecting an eye for detail, color, and composition that presage her work as a miniaturist. The embellishment of such albums was a popular and much promoted pastime for young ladies of the era because the decorative and symbolic renderings bespoke a cultivated taste and elevated sensibility.

Many of the inscriptions in the album are dated, with place names included, so we know that Clarissa Peters spent most of 1831 in Blue Hill, Maine, a town that counted her great-uncle John Peters among its original settlers. One Blue Hill resident who made an entry in her book was the Reverend Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847), a Congregational minister who found time to distinguish himself as, among other things, an artist, linguist, and naturalist. [7] Clarissa Peters at some point became a teacher, [8] and it is probable that she spent her year in this small coastal community as an assistant or a teacher at the Blue Hill Academy which had been founded in 1803. [9]

By 1835 Clarissa Peters was in Boston not only painting miniatures but giving private instruction in the art as well. [10] If a letter writer to the Boston Evening Transcript in 1904 is correct in his recollection, Peters learned her profession from Moses B. Russell. [11] Where and when they first met is unknown, but their careers as fellow miniaturists were intertwined. Mrs. Russell first exhibited her work in 1841 at the Third Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association, held in Boston, a show that also included several miniatures by her husband. The Boston Daily Mail of September 24, 1841, lauded their entries:

Mr. R. has four Miniatures on exhibition, and his wife three. They are all very beautiful.... Mr. Russell is a very talented and successful artist, and his wife paints the likeness of a lady with much accuracy and beauty of coloring. Their contributions to the Athenaeum have been much admired -- but their extensive practice, and general success is the best test of their talent.

The Boston Evening Transcript of October 2, 1841, also paid its compliments:

Mr. M. B. Russell has some miniature paintings which indicate a wonderful degree of skill, and of so exquisite a finish that they will bear the closest scrutiny.... His lady, Mrs. Russell, has also on exhibition three or four specimens, so well executed that we should not know to which of them should be awarded the palm.

Mr. Russell was awarded the palm, or in this case, the silver medal. Mrs. Russell continued exhibiting at the triennial fairs of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association in 1844 and 1847 and finally in 1850, was awarded a diploma by the judges.