Watercolor on ivory, signed and dated R M Staigg / 1852 to lower right edge, half-length portrait of a young lady with large brown eyes, seated wearing a pink gown with translucent lacework shoulder, pearl earrings and shawl draped loosely around forearms and waist, masterfully rendered against atmospheric gray-blue ground, presented beneath an ormolu mat and mounted on paper, unframed with later matting and glass.

Exterior matting 8 1/4 x 7 1/4 in.; ormolu mat 6 5/8 x 5 5/8; painting 5 1/4 x 4 in.

Collection of a Gentleman

Before coming to the United States in 1831, Richard Morrell Staigg worked as an architect’s assistant and attended the evening drawing school at the Leeds Mechanics Institute. In Newport, Rhode Island, his first job was as an ornamental and sign painter. He learned the rudiments of miniature painting from Jane Stuart (1812-1888) and received encouragement from Washington Allston (1779-1843), whose miniature he painted in 1841. Staigg was naturally attracted to the work of Edward Greene Malbone, who had died three decades earlier, but many of whose pieces remained in Newport. Staigg copied Malbone’s miniatures and eventually sent work to exhibitions at the Boston Athenaeum and the National Academy of Design, in New York City, where he was elected an associate in 1856 and an academician in 1861. Staigg lived in Boston from 1841 to 1850 and from 1865 to 1881; between those periods he lived in New York City, spending summers in Newport. It was in Newport in 1858 that Staigg saved Henry T. Tuckerman, the author of Book of the Artists (1867), from drowning. Sometime around 1860, Staigg turned from miniatures to oil portraits, landscapes, and genre scenes. The Boston Art Club held a retrospective of his work in the year he died.

Source: Barratt,Carrie Rebora and Zabar, Lori. American Portrait Miniatures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2010. pg. 223.

Painting in good condition; some oxidation and marks to ormolu matting; tone to backing sheet.

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