Ammi Phillips

Ammi Phillips (April 24, 1788 – July 11, 1865) was an American itinerant portrait painter active in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New York for five decades. After his death he was forgotten for decades until his oeuvre was reconstructed by Barbara and Larry Holdridge, collectors and students of American folk art, with the eventual support of Mary Black, art historian, after many friendly arguments and challenges to prove their contention that Phillips was not only the Kent Limner but also the earlier Border Limner. The Holdridges' extensive search in three states for Phillips paintings and for biographical details to be found in the Census Bureau and other written records, as well as the fading memories of still-living relatives of the artist and his portrait subjects (from one of whom they learned the pronunciation of the artist's first name, "Amm-eye") was triggered by their purchase in 1958 of one of the very few portraits signed on the reverse by the artist: "George C. Sunderland Painted When at the Age of 21 years by Mr, Ammi, Phillips, In the fall 1840."

Phillips was born in Colebrook, Connecticut on April 24, 1788, beginning a life that spanned the period from the beginning of George Washington's presidency to the end of the American Civil War. His extensive, continuously evolving oeuvre over a period of five decades provides posterity with a vast archive of early American self-fashioning.

While his early education remains obscure to history (although Phillips is often considered a self-taught artist, he may have apprenticed with another artist) it's clear that Phillips made up his mind to pursue a career as an artist while still young. He enters the documentary record as an artist in 1809, at the age of 21, with advertisements in both The Berkshire Reporter and a Pittsfield, Massachusetts tavern proclaiming his talent for painting "correct likenesses," distinguished by “perfect shadows and elegantly dressed in the prevailing fashions of the day.” Although Phillips also advertised his talent for "fancy painting, silhouettes, sign and ornamental painting," he soon specialized as a portraitist. His work satisfied the local standard, and within two years Phillips was receiving regular portrait commissions from community leaders in this area of western Massachusetts.

Unlike Phillips' illustrious predecessors in American art, such as Benjamin West of Philadelphia and John Singleton Copley of Boston, Phillips lived and worked on the rural frontier—a difference which is key to understanding his career. Though he was able to successfully market his skills from a young age, it's likely that the relatively sparse demand for painted portraits (a luxury good that reflects and signals a certain social standing) outside the capitals was the main factor necessitating an itinerant career that saw the artist move regularly, family perhaps in tow, between western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Hudson River Valley. The artist moved on as he exhausted the demand of the local community for painted "likenesses". This wandering lifestyle is archetypically Romantic, rather contrasting with the bourgeois domesticity of his portraits, which are almost always set within interiors. A letter from the American artist John Vanderlyn to his nephew, John Vanderlyn, Jr., from Kingston, New York, dated September 9, 1825, stated, "Were I to begin life again, I should not hesitate to follow this plan, that is, to paint portraits cheap and slight, for the mass of folks can't judge of the merits of a well finished picture, I am more and more persuaded of this. Indeed, moving about through the country as Phillips did and probably still does, must be an agreeable way of passing ones time. I saw four of his works at Jacobus Hardenburgh's the other day painted a year or two ago, which seemed to satisfy them."

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