"Making Hay"

Dateca. 1810

MediumWatercolor and pencil on wove paper

Dimensions10 9/16" x 15 1/2" (26.8 cm. x 39.4 cm.) unframed; 13 3/8" x 17 13/16" framed.

Credit LineGift of Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

Object number1932.301.4

DescriptionWatercolor. Lady at left has yellow tunic and blue skirt, with yellow plumed bonnet. Child has blue dress and carries basket of flowers. Lady at right has brownish bonnet tied under chin, blue dress top, and rakes hay. House in background looks foreign.Label TextDuring the first half of the nineteenth century, watercolor painting gradually replaced embroidery as the favored leisure pursuit of fashionable young women. This picture shows one stage of that transition: Selected areas in it simulate the appearance of needlework stitches.Mark(s)Watermark reading vertically on the right-hand margin is "RUSE & TURNE{R}." (Joseph Ruse operated the Upper Tovil Mill in Kent, England, beginning about 1799. In 1800 he went into partnership with a man who may have been Joseph Turner. Joseph, William, and Richard Turner were all indicated as papermakers in 1796 and 1800, but William and Richard were in business with their sons from 1800 until the 1820s, leaving Joseph as the most likely possibility of the three to have been in partnership with Ruse. (Thomas L. Gravell to AARFAC, May 16, 1985.)ProvenanceFound by John Becker (New York, NY); Abby Aldrich Rockefeller; given to The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in 1932.
Donor: Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Found by John Becker