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This needlework picture is one of a group of Boston-made scenes that all depict variants of a young lady holding a fishing pole, a group of reapers, a promenading couple, and a mounted horseman, with dogs, birds and leaping deer. It is worked in wool and silk with beads on linen canvas.
needlework (visual works)
linen (material)
silk (textile)
wool (textile)
embroidering
beads (pierced objects)
petit point
Picture, Needlework
Romanticized pastoral scenes were popular in the eighteenth century. This oversized needlework picture is the largest of about seventeen known scenes called "fishing lady" pictures, all of which were probably made in Boston, Massachusetts, around 1750. In addition to the central figure with her fishing pole, they depict men and women, animals, and insects in a lush green landscape. The images of a young woman waiting for a catch and couples in fertile surroundings suggest youthful fantasies about courtship and love. Although its maker is unknown, this picture descended in the Lowell family and hung at the author James Russell Lowell's house, "Elmwood," in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the nineteenth century. It is now on display at the Otis House in Boston, Massachusetts.
This oversized needlework picture is the largest of about seventeen surviving scenes known as fishing lady pictures. In addition to the central figure with her fishing pole, they depict men and women, animals, and insects in a lush green landscape. These images showing a young woman waiting for a catch and couples frolicking suggest their school-aged makers' youthful fantasies about courtship and love.
Paper label on reverse: ""Dr. Francis Brunet[sp]/ Elemwood[sp] Ave./ Canub Mass."" Stencilled: ""F.L.B.""
Unknown
21 3/8 x 58 1/4 x 1 1/2 (HxWxD) (inches)
Gift of Miss Frances Lowell Burnett
2000.11
Massachusetts (United States)
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