Unidentified artist
Eighteenth century

Overmantel from the Baldwin House, Shrewsbury, Massachusetts,
late eighteenth century
Oil on white pine panel1
Image: 24 1/4 x 50 in. (61.6 x 127 cm)
Gift of Mrs. Eveleth V. Hill and Mrs. John W. Lasell, 1980.32
Provenance
Probably Nathan Baldwin (1790–1850) by 1832; to his son Henry W. Baldwin (b. 1820) by 1859; to Henry Baldwin, perhaps the brother (1788–1871) of Nathan, by 1870. Purchased by George Sumner (1824–1893), Shrewsbury, from the Baldwin House at the time of its demolition in 1885; to his son Edward Prentiss Sumner (b. 1866), Shrewsbury; to his daughters Katharine S. (Mrs. Eveleth V.) Hill and Frances (Mrs. John W.) Lasell.2

References
Little 1952, 134.

Little 1972, 136, 155.

Worcester Art Museum, "Acquisitions by Gift," WorcesterJournal 4 (1980–81): 57, 61.

Art and the Antiques Weekly (Newtown, Conn.), March 20, 1981.

Notes
1. Identification of the wood is based on a scientific analysis of the cell structure by dendrologist R. Bruce Hoadley, January 5, 2000.

2. Identification of the Baldwin house is based upon a conversation between Susan Strickler, the Worcester Art Museum’s curator of American Art, and Shrewsbury historian Henry Harlow around the time the museum acquired the painting. Undated notes in object file, Worcester Art Museum. Maps of Shrewsbury trace the ownership of the Baldwin house from N[athan] Baldwin (1832) to H[enry] W. Baldwin (1859) to H[enry] Baldwin (1870). For maps of Shrewsbury, see Henry Snow, A Map of the Town of Shrewsbury, Mass. (1832); A Map of the Town of Shrewsbury, Mass., compiled and published by L. M. Parker (Boston: Meisel Brothers Lith., 1859); and F. W. Beers, Atlas of Worcester County, Massachusetts . . . (New York: F. W. Beers and Co., 1870). For the Baldwin family, see Ward 1847, 246–47; Baldwin 1881; and Worcester County, Register of Probate, Series A, record nos. 2882, 2883, 2884, 2885, 2926.