Splendid Watercolor and Silk Embroidery of Pharaoh's Daughter Finding the Infant Moses, Frances ...

Splendid Watercolor and Silk Embroidery of Pharaoh's Daughter Finding the Infant Moses, Frances Williams Pitkin (1799-1845), Misses Patten's School, Hartford, Connecticut, c. 1810. Large woven silk ground painted with gouache and watercolor to depict background scenery and sketched details of a scene from the Book of Exodus in which Pharaoh's daughter and her attendants rescue Moses from the bulrushes along the Nile, the figures dressed in long, shimmering satin-stitched gowns and Pharaoh's daughter herself with a shawl and parasol fringed with couched metallic threads, the verdant landscape composed largely of couched chenille and satin-stitched silk threads, mounted in original frame under eglomise mat inscribed 'Behold the Babe Wept & She Had Compassion on Him.' in gilt letters across the bottom, and 'F. Pitkin' at the top, (sight) 13 x 16 1/2 in., (frame) 19 x 22 1/4 in. Footnotes: Provenance The collection of Eric van Rooy. Nathan Liverant & Son, Colchester, Connecticut, 13 December 2014. Literature Signature details of embroideries made at the Misses Patten's School include the use of metallic threads and raised embroidery. Students apparently favored this biblical narrative in particular: a Patten School silk painting of identical composition by Ruth Green (1791-1851) is illustrated in Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, vol. 1 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), fig. 241. Another silk-embroidered example signed by Emily (Sage) Selden (1789-1836) of Middletown, Connecticut, retaining a labeled Nathan Ruggles frame, has been documented by Kevin J. Tulimieri of Nathan Liverant & Son. Also see example by Lucretia Colton (1788-1821) of Longmeadow, Massachusetts, illustrated in Georgiana Brown Harbeson, American Needlework (New York, Coward-McCann, 1938), fig. 1, p. 82. For further information on this lot please visit Bonhams.com For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing