A SILK PICTORIAL SAMPLER ON LINEN

Incorporating a variety of beautifully stitched flowers, vines and trees above a delightful figurative scene with young lovers and farm animals, this pictorial sampler is an Essex County, Massachusetts masterpiece. It relates to at least ten other works with dates ranging from 1799 to 1806. Termed by Betty Ring as the "shady bower" group, Ring further notes that these "spectacular" works are the most famous to survive from Newburyport. The distinctive long stitch favored in the region is present in this lot in the grassy background as well as in the seated woman's dress. Both the central oval framing the verse and the pictoral scene along the bottom edge of this needlework were popular devices during the early Federal period in towns located along Massachusetts' Northshore. The daughter of Richard Bartlett (1762-1810) and Anne Moody (1765-1831), Sarah Bartlett (1788-1822) was born in Newburyport and in 1809 married William Gage (Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850, vol. I (New York, 1993), pp. 115, 118-119, figs. 133-135; Glee Krueger, A Gallery of American Samplers: The Theodore H. Kapnek Collection (New York, 1978), p. 41, fig. 50; Clyde V. Gage, comp., Gage Families (1965), p. 108; additional information provided by Carol and Stephen Huber).