Ammi Phillips portrait woman
Portrait of a Woman with Pink Ribbons
Ammi Phillips (1788-1865), Kent, Connecticut
c. 1833
oil on canvas
31 3/4" x 27"
This portrait likely depicts Melinda Ann (Arnold) Johnson (1808-1842), whose parents were painted by Phillips in 1833.
Provenance: Anna Banks Kerr (1900-1983), Minneapolis, Minnesota Ginsburg & Levy, New York, by purchase from above, circa 1973-1975 Tillou Gallery, Inc., Litchfield, Connecticut, 1982 Thomas Colville Fine Arts, New Haven, Connecticut, 1983; Peter and Barbara Goodman, sold, Christie’s, New York, 20 January 2022, lot 133.
Exhibition: Philadelphia, The Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, American Folk Painting, 14 January-20 February 1977. New York, American Folk Art Museum, Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture, 5 February-17 April 1994. New York, American Folk Art Museum, The Seduction of Light: Ammi Phillips Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green and Red, 7 October 2008-29 March 2009.
Literature: Tillou Gallery, Inc., advertisement, The Magazine Antiques (January 1982), p. 23. Stacy C. Hollander and Howard Fertig, Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture (New York, 1994), p. 38, pl. XXIX. Stacy C. Hollander, “Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture,” Folk Art (Spring 1994), pp. 44-45. Stacy C. Hollander, The Seduction of Light: Ammi Phillips Mark Rothko Compositions in Pink, Green, and Red (New York, 2008), p. 23. David R. Allaway, My People: The Works of Ammi Phillips, vol. 1, p. 250, no. 752, vol. 2, p. 59. Peter Goodman, Notebook, no. 800.