More Treasures from the Katcher Collection

Rachel Ann Maria (Overbaugh) Ostrander and Titus Ostrander

Attributed to Ammi Phillips (1788-1868)

Saugerties, New York, circa 1834-1835

Oil on canvas, 58 x 44 inches, original veneered frame

This is one of the greatest folk portraits ever painted. Ammi Phillips was one of the most successful and prolific portrait painters of the nineteenth century, plying his trade in New York’s Hudson River Valley and Western New England for more than half a century.  This striking, elegant likeness of Rachel Ostrander and her son Titus is his largest known work and generally considered one of his best.  The beauty and timeless serenity of the image belies the adversity faced by the principal sister in the decade following the completion of this painting.  Rachel Overbaugh married Stephen Nottingham in 1827, when she was just seventeen.  They had Titus shortly thereafter, and another child just after this portrait was painted (interesting to note how Phillips helped her hide her pregnancy).  When Stephen died in 1840 Rachel married her first cousin, Solomon Overbaugh in 1842.  Their child Peter was one year old when Solomon died in 1844, and Rachel married her third husband, Captain William Teunis Swart, in 1846.

Flying Fame

Fame is fleeting. This magnificent weathervane from the Jane Katcher Collection of Americana (made about 1890 and measuring 30" x 31")  gets that message across in the plainest terms possible. 

The Greek Goddess and allegorical figure of Fame, trumpeting a triumph and bestowing a laurel wreath, was actually a rare subject for commercial weathervane manufacturers of the late nineteenth century. The delicate figure was undoubtedly difficult to execute and has only a limited number of appropriate placements. It simply wouldn't work on a cow barn. 


This weathervane is one of the only four known examples featuring Fame, and – despite the fact that Fame is a winged figure – the only ope depicted in a flying pose. Its maker is unknown, although the weathervane was probably the product of a major shop such as E.G. Washburne & Co., J.L. Mott Iron Works, and J.W. Fiske, all of New York. Attribution of these weathervanes is made difficult by the standard practice of borrowing designs or buying and reusing parts. 

This weathervane is said to have been found on a building possibly used as a preparatory school for girls by a Catholic diocese in the Boston area. Since learning this fact I've been trying to imagine what the Nuns would say to the girls in relation to the weathervane. Was it aspirational? Or a warning about the pursuit of fame? Did the weathervane predate the school altogether?


Regardless of its original context, this weathervane is a killer piece, and its your to enjoy in our galleries for the rest of the year.

Sign of the Times

Here's another great piece from the Katcher Collection of Americana that we will feature in the Fenimore Art Museum's upcoming exhibition, Inspired Traditions (see information about our related symposium on October 1 here). It's an exuberant sign proudly displaying its owner’s name and, perhaps, his highly abstracted likeness. From the looks of it, you would think that the business was thriving. The historical record tells a quite different story.


Morris Lord (1794-1849) inherited a portion of his father’s estate and for the time enjoyed financial success in real estate in and around Parsonfield, Maine. By the 1820s he briefly owned a store, presumably the business advertised here. Lord suffered financial losses by 1840, possibly as a result of the Panic of 1837, and moved with his family to Lowell, Massachusetts, where he ran a boarding house. Lowell was a thriving mill town where thousands of young women migrated to take jobs in the factories, and thus boarding houses were common. It was a place where many tradesmen and merchants found some measure of financial success. 

Our Mr. Lord, alas, was not one of those who thrived in Lowell. When he died of cholera in 1849, his death certificate indicates that he was a laborer. This trade sign, therefore, documents an all-too-brief shining moment in a business career that had more than its share of setbacks. The bright side: because the store was not in business for very long, the sign here did not suffer long exposure to the elements, and thus survives in great condition for us to enjoy. I cannot imagine what Mr. Lord would think of this as his legacy.

The Truth Comes Out on October First

It seems like every time I delve into a folk art painting the stories it reveals completely reshape the experience of viewing the artwork. This transformation is even more radical when on occasion I am asked to write an entire essay on a piece. Such was the case with a 1740 portrait of Annetje Kool, a young Dutch-American woman painted by Pieter Vanderlyn in the mid-Hudson Valley town of Esopus.

Annetje looks so unassuming. Looking at her placid likeness, you would hardly guess that she lived on contested ground; the frontier of two great European empires.What secrets is she hiding?

At the time of her wedding, Annetje had a six-year-old child by an unnamed father. We don't know whatever happened to the child, who is not mentioned in any period records.

The artist, Pieter Vanderlyn, has some secrets of his own. What connection did he have to the Dutch Slave Trade in Africa and the Caribbean? Why did he start preaching in the 1730s? Why were his sermons illegal?

Pieter's grandson, John Vanderlyn, was one of America's greatest history painters. What long-forgotten story from his childhood likely inspired one of his most famous paintings, Marius Amidst the Ruins of Carthage?

Unlike scores of other posts that I've presented here over the past two years, the answers to these questions will have to wait. I will give them in person at a unique new Symposium to be held here at the Fenimore Art Museum on October 1. Information about the Symposium can be found here. You can even register online.

This Americana Symposium highlights the stunning collection of American folk art assembled over thirty years by Jan Katcher, a retired pediatric radiologist. We will exhibit the collection at the museum from October 1 - December 31.

If you live in the Central New York area, please try to come. We will have a wide range of speakers who are leaders in the field, presenting on topics ranging from Shaker artworks to Jewish folk art to painted furniture to weathervanes. If you cannot come, please pass the word on to others that might be interested.

I do hope you can make it here on October 1 to hear some remarkable stories unfold. In the coming days I will post more pictures from the Katcher Collection to give you a sense of what you can see and hear about at the museum this fall.