Robert Swain Gifford

Robert Swain Gifford (American, 1840-1905) "The Rock of Gibraltar" Oil on Canvas

Mary Blood Mellen (American Female Artist, 1819-1882) A Large and Exceptional Two-Tiered Fruit Still Life Oil on Canvas Painting, circa 1850 Signed lower right: Mellen Inscribed possibly by the artist's hand on the stretcher bar: To be sent to Sowle & Ward's for Miss C. A. Rice This sumptuous two-tier display of fruit and elegant glassware is the largest and most ambitious still-life painting known to have been produced by Mary Blood Mellen (1819-1882), an American Female artist best known for her luminous marines strongly indebted to the style of Fitz Henry Lane. Indeed, still lifes from her hand are extremely rare. The present work is very close to the style of still life popularized by the Prussian-American artist Severin Roesen (1805-1882) who specialized in the genre during the middle decades of the nineteenth century and is signed as Roesen sometimes signed his own efforts, at lower right, as a curly trompe-l'oeil grape tendril, which reads in this case "Mellen." Until quite recently, Mary Blood Mellen was described in histories of American art exclusively as a copyist, notably of Lane. But as more research into her life and work has been undertaken, that picture of her achievement has been substantially revised and refined. Mellen was, in fact, Lane's pupil, and a copyist of his work. But owing to the skill she developed working with him in his Gloucester studio, Mellen evolved into an artist in her own right, working alongside him as a sometimes collaborator on the same pictures-their work often being so similar that it is frequently difficult to tell it apart. Mellen and Lane also formed a fast friendship. She also painted ravishing moonlit marine compositions of her own invention, as well as nostalgic New England landscapes in her own style. At a 2007 scholarly conference held at Spanierman Galleries in New York in conjunction with the exhibition, "Fitz Henry Lane and Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries" held at the Cape Ann Historical Museum, there was a small footnote to the effect that Mellen was also known to have copied works by other artists, including Alfred Bricher and Severin Roesen (See Report on Scholars' Gathering in Association with the Exhibition "Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries," 2007, p. 5.) How she encountered works by those figures, particularly Roesen who was active primarily in New York City and eastern and central Pennsylvania, remains speculative. Certainly, copying other artists' work was an aspect of nearly every artist's training at the time Mellen was active as a painter. Mellen was born in Vermont in 1819 to parents who were originally from Massachusetts. She was educated at the Quaker's Fryville Seminary in Bolton, Massachusetts, where she would have learned artistic crafts including theorem painting...

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