Lot Details & Additional Photographs
Oil on canvas (lined), 1878, signed and dated at lower right, presented in a contemporary giltwood frame.
Stretcher size 15 x 25 in.; Frame dimensions 22 x 32 in.
Private Collection, Rocky Mount, North Carolina Alfred T. Ordway was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, and received art training in a sign painter's shop. Ordway then studied portraiture with George Peter Alexander Healy (American, 1813-1894) but his specialty became landscapes of the New England area. He was a noted artist of the White Mountain School.
Ordway opened a studio in Boston in 1845. In 1854, he became a founding member of the Boston Art Club, later serving as its secretary, treasurer, and president between 1855 and 1866. Ordway exhibited with the Boston Art Club, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Mechanics Fair, the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanics Association, the National Academy of Design, and the Brooklyn Art Association. Ordway's work is represented in the Whistler House Museum of Art collections, the Colby College, the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, and the Portland Museum of Art.
The painting has a wax lining, a flake at the upper left corner, a repaired tear to the upper middle with associated retouching, and some minor large cracking and retouching visible under UV light inspection.