Attributed to Samuel Folwell

Samuel Folwell worked as a miniaturist, silhouettist, engraver, hairworker, needlework designer and teacher. Appearing in America in 1788, Folwell started as an itinerant, but by 1791 he had settled in Philadelphia where he remained for the rest of his life. Per William Dunlap’s, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, Folwell was listed in the Phila, directory of circa 1798 as a “fancy hair worker," which explains the neatly braided hair on reverse of what is likely the original frame.

Best known now for the silkwork faces he drew for his wife’s school for girls, Folwell’s portraits and mourning pieces exhibit all the same charm. This mourning miniature portrait, depicting the two adult children of J.A. Wilson, are slumped over their father’s tombstone, engraved with his name and death date of March 16, 1789, is highly conventional of mourning miniatures of the time period, which show Neoclassical architectural elements, sepia color palette, and eighteenth century costume.  The excavation of Pompeii and Herculaneum in the first half of the eighteenth century ignited an intense fervor for classical aesthetics and ideals, which stretched into the first quarter of the nineteenth century. A major humanist movement in the Enlightenment was represented in Neoclassical jewels, which represented allegorical scenarios in concepts of life and society. Female figures often donned high-waisted, flowing Greco-Roman style dresses with lower cut bodices and long white veils. Men were depicted wearing contemporary mourning fashion of the late eighteenth century; a white cravat, waistcoat, a dark coat, pantaloons, and long socks. Sepia miniatures were also produced in high volume with the quintessential scene of willow tree, urn, and tomb painted first and the more sentimental details added secondly upon commission.