Folk Art Feature
In Memory of Margaret L. Bates is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's outstanding collection of American folk art.
This picture exemplifies a genre known as "memorial pictures"—romantic and symbolic expressions of grief popular during the first half of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the death of George Washington in 1799, this genre is characterized by a standardized set of features: an urn on a tomb, a weeping willow, and mourning relatives placed in a garden setting that sometimes includes a church or the family home in the background.
This standardization arose not only from the symbolism of the objects themselves, but from the fact that the pieces were often created by young girls as part of a school curriculum, or by amateurs, who studied art instruction books or received private drawing lessons.
The inscription of this piece dedicates the work to a child, and includes a poem that reinforces the general theme of death and resurrection. Since memorial pictures were often created long after the subject's death, this piece was probably painted sometime after 1805, the date included in the inscription.
Source: Lynda Roscoe Hartigan. Made with Passion: The Hemphill Folk Art Collection in the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990).
Pictured: Unidentified artist, In Memory of Margaret L. Bates, after 1805, watercolor, pen and ink, and glitter on paperboard, 17 x 19 5/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson.
In Memory of Margaret L. Bates is part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's outstanding collection of American folk art.
This picture exemplifies a genre known as "memorial pictures"—romantic and symbolic expressions of grief popular during the first half of the nineteenth century. Inspired by the death of George Washington in 1799, this genre is characterized by a standardized set of features: an urn on a tomb, a weeping willow, and mourning relatives placed in a garden setting that sometimes includes a church or the family home in the background.