Fireboard

c. 1820

Possibly “Stimp” (active c. 1820)
From the John Moseley House, Southbury, Connecticut

The fireplace and hearth served as the center of eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century American homes. In larger houses that had fireplaces in more than one room, they were often “dressed up” with paintings hung above the mantel and fireboards. The latter were especially common during the summer months, when they were utilized to beautify the gaping hole of the unused fireplace. This fireboard was painted right around 1820, when John Moseley completed the construction of a house on Main Street North in Southbury, Connecticut.

Status: On View, Gallery 169
Department: Arts of the Americas

Title: Fireboard
Place: Southbury (Object found in)
Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.: c. 1820
Medium: Oil on pine panel
Dimensions: 87.6 × 116.2 cm (34 1/4 × 45 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Purchased with funds provided by the Antiquarian Society; Quinn E. Delaney Fund; purchased with funds provided by Mrs. Herbert A. Vance, Charles C. Haffner III, and Jan Pavlovic
Reference Number: 2011.44
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/208078/manifest.json

Nina Fletcher Little, Country Arts in Early American Homes (New York: Dutton, 1975), pl. 15.
Robert Charles Bishop, Folk Painters of America (New York: Dutton), 1979, pl. 4.
Nina Fletcher Little, Little by Little: Six Decades of Collecting American Decorative Arts (New York: Dutton), 1984, p. 97, fig. 129.
Sotheby’s, The Bertram K. Little and Nina Flectcher Little Collection, Part II, 1994, lot 782.
Judith A. Barter and Monica Obniski, For Kith and Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2012) no. 15.

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Date Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.

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IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.