
Anna Maria Cumpston
Charles Peale Polk·c. 1790
Historical Context
Charles Peale Polk's portrait of Anna Maria Cumpston, painted around 1790, represents the American provincial portrait tradition during the early republic. Polk, nephew of Charles Willson Peale, developed a straightforward portrait style suited to the democratic values of the new nation. His sitters were typically members of the middle and professional classes who valued honest likenesses over aristocratic flattery.
Technical Analysis
Polk's oil-on-canvas technique demonstrates the direct, somewhat flat handling characteristic of American provincial portraiture. The face is rendered with careful attention to individual features, while the simplified background and costume reflect the practical, unpretentious aesthetic of early American portrait painting.
Provenance
Probably by descent from the sitter to her daughter, Emily Williams Cooper (Mrs. Colin Campbell Cooper), Philadelphia; probably her son, Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937), Philadelphia, or his sister, Emily, or his brothers, Samuel M. and Ned Cooper; (Victor Spark, New York, 1944); sold 1948 to Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch;[1] gift 1953 to NGA. [1] A photograph of the painting in the Edgar Preston Richardson Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., is inscribed "Victor Spark 1944." Spark described the previous owners of the painting as the sitter's direct descendants (letter of 4 March 1948, NGA curatorial file). Later he wrote that he bought the painting "in Philadelphia from a family with which Colin Campbell Cooper must have been closely connected as the house was filled with his works. I believe that the family's name was Cooper also." (letter of 18 October 1983, NGA curatorial file). Spark's papers, Archives of American Art, offer no information on the history of this painting. For information on Cooper and his relatives see James M. Hansen, _An Exhibition of Paintings by Colin Campbell Cooper_ (Santa Barbara, 1981), unpaginated and _The New York Times_ 7 November 1937, section 2, 9 (obituary).

_-_2014.136.66_-_Corcoran_Gallery_of_Art.jpg&width=600)



