Collections record Beta

Collection Record Detail

Object Name

Portrait Miniature - Laura Maria Wolcott Rankin

Object Number

2024-04-1

Description

Rectangular watercolor on ivory portrait miniature of Laura Maria Wolcott Rankin (1811-1887). Miniature shows a half-length portrait of a young woman, facing right. Sitter wears a black dress of silk with a wide neckline and puffed sleeves, cinched at waist. Red shawl over her shoulders. Sitter has dark brown curly hair and blue eyes. Miniature is set in a rectangular case of tooled red leather, under glass with velvet spacer. Originally a hinged case, the top is separated and missing. Written on reverse of the case, in ink, "Laura Maria Wolcott/Mrs. Robert G. Rankin." Paper label pasted underneath, "Dr. Francis H. Rankin."

Provenance

SITTER: Laura Maria Wolcott was a Litchfield resident and the daughter of Frederick and Betsey Huntington Wolcott; she was the granddaughter of Oliver Wolcott, Connecticut governor and signer of the Declaration. She attended Sarah Pierce’s Litchfield Female Academy between 1822 and 1827 and is among the better represented Female Academy students in the Society's collections. Laura married Robert G. Rankin, a graduate of the Litchfield Law School, in 1831 and the family moved to Fishkill, NY. In Dickinson’s workbook, he records painting three “Miss Woolcots” in 1831 while in Litchfield. We believe these sitters to be sisters Laura Maria (this miniature), Mary Ann (a miniature already in the Society’s collection), and Elizabeth W. (location unknown). The miniature of their father, Frederick Wolcott, is also in the Society’s collection.

Comment

ARTIST: Born in Milton, a village in the town of Litchfield, Anson Dickinson began advertising himself as a miniature painter in 1802. He traveled to New York in 1804, where he was painted by Edward Greene Malbone, the leading American miniaturist of his day. Dickinson painted over 1,500 miniatures over the course of fifty years, traveling as far as Canada and South Carolina to paint. He kept a studio in New York for a period, and returned frequently to Litchfield where he painted prominent residents and students of the Female Academy and Law School.