Painting

Title:

Mindwell Hoskins Buffum

Object Name:

Painting

Object ID:

2019.007.02

Creator:

Powers, Asahel L. (1813-1843)Artist

Place of Origin:

Lyman, NH

Date:

1838

Description:

Portrait of Mindwell Hoskins Buffum (1809-1882) by Asahel L. Powers (1813-1843), Lyman, NH, 1838. Oil on canvas. Signed and dated in black paint on back of canvas, "Ptd by / A L Powers / 1838". Unframed.

Material:

Textile

Dimensions:

H-30 W-24.75 inches

Provenance:

Asahel L. Powers probably painted the portraits of Jedediah and Mindwell (Hoskins) Buffum while traveling through the upper Connecticut River valley in 1838. Jedediah Buffum (1806-1876), the son of John and Joanna Buffum, was a prosperous farmer and founder of the town of Monroe, formed from the town of Lyman in 1854. A Grafton County Road Commissioner and Justice of the Peace, Buffum represented the Town of Monroe in the House of Representatives in 1862 and 1863. Jedediah Buffum and Mindwell Hoskins were married on November 11, 1830.

Asahel Lynde Powers, the son of Asahel, Jr. and Sophia (Lynde) Powers, was born in Springfield, VT, on February 28, 1813. He began his career as an itinerant artist at an early age; the first portrait attributed to him is of Dr. Joel Green of Rutland, VT, dated 1831. Several portraits from the mid-1830s were painted in Springfield, indicating that Powers returned there periodically from his travels through Vermont, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire. In the early 1840s the artist moved to Olney, IL. A number of likenesses dated 1840 and painted in the area of Plattsburgh, NY, indicate that he began his journey west around this time and that he traveled through Clinton and Franklin Counties in New York, where relatives and other Vermont residents lived. While in New York, Powers evidently gave painting instruction as well. Landscape and still life painter Daniel Folger Bigelow (1823-1910) of Peru, NY, wrote that he acquired his first instruction from Powers, to whose influence he owed his own "delicacy of coloring and treatment." There are no known works, however, from the artist's Illinois residency. Elizabeth M. Powers, his widow, made an inventory of the deceased's possessions, in Olney, IL, where he died in 1843.

The two portraits were purchased by the donors from Cobbs Auctioneers, Peterborough, NH, February 23, 2019; lot #28.

Credit Line:

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. James L. Garvin

People:

Buffum, Jedediah (1806-1876), Buffum, Mindwell Hoskins (1809-1882), Powers, Asahel L. (1813-1843)

Subjects:

Buffum, Mindwell Hoskins