Painting

Title:

Nancy Morrison Merrill

Object Name:

Painting

Object ID:

2021.006

Creator:

Nutting, Benjamin F. (1803-1887)Artist

Date:

circa 1826

Description:

Miniature portrait of Nancy (Morrison) Merrill (1796-1860) of Salem, NH; attributed to Benjamin F. Nutting (1803-1887). Watercolor on ivory. Label with ink inscription attached to back of frame: "Nancy Morrison Merrill / Born Aug 17th 1796. / Died Jan 29th 1860. / Painted at the age of 30 / yrs, by Nutter." Ivory attached to cardboard mat covered with brown velvet. In gilded and painted gesso and wood frame.

Material:

Ivory

Dimensions:

H-3.6 W-2.8 inches

Provenance:

Nancy Morrison Merrill (1796-1860) of Salem, NH, was a woman of great intellectual ability and an active adherent of evangelical Christianity in New England during the second quarter of the 19th century. According to the Morrison family genealogy, Nancy Morrison was a force behind her husband, Abraham Dow Merrill (1797-1878), whom she married on February 14, 1817, helping convert him to Christianity, encouraging him to preach, and supporting him in his role as a successful Methodist Episcopal minister.

Benjamin F. Nutting (1803-1887), the likely painter of this miniature, son of Samuel and Catherine Gookin Nutting, was born in Portsmouth, NH, on October 30, 1803. By 1810 the family had moved to Boston, where Benjamin attended Boston Latin School and was apprenticed to lithographer William S. Pendleton. Nutting built a career in Boston as a lithographer, portrait artist, and landscape painter, working through his death in 1887. Emily Lucretia Nutting (1816-1892), a younger sister of Benjamin F., also gained some distinction as an artist, drawing a portrait for the engraving firm of Annin & Smith and exhibiting at the Boston Athenaeum in 1835. She also taught art at the New Hampton (NH) Academical and Theological Seminary for two terms in 1833 and 1834, before moving to Tuscumbia, Alabama, where she headed the Tuscumbia Female Academy and married John C. Burrus (1787-1863) in 1838.

The donors purchased the portrait at the Skinner, Inc., April 12, 2021 auction, Lot 1223.

Credit Line:

Gift of William W. Upton and Mr. and Mrs. James L. Garvin

People:

Merrill, Nancy M. (1796-1860)

Subjects:

Merrill, Nancy Morrison