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Alvan T. Fisher

Mishap at the Ford, 1818

Not on View

Medium

oil on wood

Dimensions

overall: 70.17 × 91.28 cm (27 5/8 × 35 15/16 in.)

framed: 90.81 × 110.81 × 10.16 cm (35 3/4 × 43 5/8 × 4 in.)

Credit Line

Corcoran Collection (Museum Purchase, Gallery Fund)

Accession Number

2015.19.83

Artists / Makers

Alvan Fisher (painter) American, 1792 - 1863

Image Use

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Inscription

lower center: A. Fisher, pinx. Feb 7 1818

Provenance

Possibly S.W. (possibly Samuel Wyllys) Pomeroy, Esq., Cincinnati, c. 1849.[1] (Irving Barlow, Boston area),1955/1956; acquired 1955/1956 by (Vose Galleries, Boston);[2] purchased April 1957 by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington; acquired 2015 by the National Gallery of Art.

[1] If a painting titled Crossing the Ford, and lent to the Western Art-Union in Cincinnati in 1849, is this painting, it was lent by Pomeroy.

[2] Vose Galleries, in a letter of 5 April 1957 to Corcoran director Hermann Warner Williams, Jr. (in NGA curatorial files), writes that the painting "appeared a few months ago in the Boston area, in the hands of an antique dealer." The painting "had graduated through several hands to a small picture dealer before it came to [the attention of Vose Galleries]." Vose Galleries had no success tracing the painting beyond the first dealer, whose name was provided to Emily Shapiro of the Corcoran by Siobhan Wheeler of Vose Galleries in an e-mail of 3 March 2004 (copy in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Corcoran Gallery of Art

Exhibition History

1849: Possibly Gallery of the Western Art Union, Cincinnati, c. May - October 1849, no. 32 as Crossing the Ford.

1956: [Loan exhibition of early American paintings, from Vose Galleries], Old Sturbridge Village, November 1956, no catalogue.

1963: Progress of an American Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 26 October - 29 December 1963, unpublished checklist.

1976: Corcoran [The American Genius], Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1963, no checklist.

1981: Of Time and Place: American Figurative Art from the Corcoran Gallery, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Wshington; Cincinnati Art Museum; San Diego Museum of Art; University of Kentucky, Lexington; Hunter Museum of Art, Chattanooga; Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa; Portland Art Museum, Oregon; Des Moines Art Center; Museum of Fine Arts, Saint Petersburg, 1981-1983, no. 1.

1984: Georgian Canada: Conflict and Culture, 1745-1820, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, 7 June - 21 October 1984, no. 207.

1986: Views and Visions: American Landscape before 1830, Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 1986 - 29 March 1987, unnumbered checklist.

2004: Figuratively Speaking: The Human Form in American Art, Corcoran gallery of Art, Washington, 20 November 2004 - 7 August 2005, unpublished checklist.

2008: The American Evolution: A History Through Art, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 1 March - 27 July 2008, unpublished checklist.

2009: American Paintings from the Collection, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 6 June-18 October 2009, unpublished checklist.

2013: American Journeys: Visions of Place, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, 21 September 2013 - 28 September 2014, unpublished checklist.

Bibliography

1966: Phillips, Dorothy W. A Catalogue of the Collection of American Paintings in The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Vol. 1: Painters born before 1850. Washington, 1966: :53, repro. 54.

2000: Cash, Sarah, with Terrie Sultan. American Treasures of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. New York, 2000: 34, repro.

2011: Carson, Jenny. "Alvan Fisher, Mishap at the Ford." In Corcoran Gallery of Art: American Paintings to 1945. Edited by Sarah Cash. Washington, 2011: 66-67, 257, repro.