Important Americana
Important Americana
Property from the Collection of Leslie and Peter Warwick, Middletown, New Jersey
'The Towering Ladies of Lebanon' Needlework Sampler, Worked by Rebecca and Eleanor Keiser, Mrs. Hoff's School, Lebanon, Pennsylvania, 1830
Live auction begins on:
January 25, 03:00 PM GMT
Estimate
15,000 - 25,000 USD
Lot Details
Description
silk and chenille threads and watercolor on silk on linen
21 ½ by 15 ¼ in.
signed and dated Rebecca and Eleanor Kreiser There (sic) Work In The Year 1830 over the verse Love the Lord as he Will be/ A Tender Father Unto Thee/ MRS HOFF SChOOL/ This Work In Hand/ My Friends May Have/ When I Am Dead/ And In My Grave; the whole executed on a linen ground in a variety of green, blue, white, and gold silk and chenille threads with a naïve rendition of Lady Liberty, with painted silk face, looming above a brick house and pine tree, and offering sustenance to the American eagle.
Sotheby's, New York, Important Americana, January 2004, sale 7959, lot 270;
Stephen and Carol Huber, Lyme, Connecticut;
Arthur and Sybil Kern, Pawtucket, Rhode Island.
Leslie and Peter Warwick, Love At First Sight: Discovering Stories About Folk Art & Antiques Collected by Two Generations & Three Families, (New Jersey: 2022), pp. 164-5, fig. 303.
Rebecca and Eleanor Keiser's sampler is part of a group known as The Towering Ladies of Lebanon. The needlework picture is based on Edward Savage's print, "The Goddess of Youth, Hebe, Giving Support to the Bald Eagle." The image of Hebe supports Revolutionary ideology and republican values. She offers a cup of sustenance to the American eagle that has descended from the sky. The artists were connecting the new Republican age to the Classical period.
Rebecca Keiser was married on October 2, 1834 in the Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, Jonestown, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania to Willhelm Neilman. No details of her sister, Eleanor's, life have been found.
A closely-related example was sold at Sotheby's in the Theodore H. Kapnek Collection of American Samplers, January 31, 1981, Sale 4531Y, Lot 35.
For further information, see Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery, Vol. II, Knopf, New York, 1993, pp. 429 - 433.