The Tipsy Mermaid

 

Sometimes you just have to tilt your head sideways to get a new perspective.

        In the folk art collection at the Fenimore Art Museum we have many pieces that are among the earliest published artworks in the field. The reason for this is that they come from the collection of Jean Lipman, who published the seminal books American Primitive Painting and American Folk Art in Wood, Metal and Stone in the 1940s using many pieces in her collection as illustrations. When our benefactor Stephen C. Clark purchased the Lipman Collection for us in 1950, it gave the museum iconic artworks well known to a generation of folk art enthusiasts.

            One of those pieces is our great Mermaid Garden Fountain. It was found in Baltimore and came with the history that it was displayed in a shop window in the early 19^th century as a garden ornament for sale. The style of the carving suggests that it was the work of a professional shipcarver.

            The Mermaid appears on page 150 of Lipman’s Wood, Metal and Stone and she had this to say about it. “A metal tube ran up the body to the mouth, allowing the mermaid to spout water which must have risen and fallen in a curve, repeating in reverse the lines of her sweeping tail… This figure is naïve indeed but it is just the type of wood sculpture from which our modern sophisticates have derived inspiration."

            But something is wrong here. When she was photographed for the book, the Mermaid was positioned with a vertical torso. Probably because of this image, this was the way she was exhibited and published in Cooperstown and elsewhere for almost 50 years. About ten years ago I came across a notation buried deep within her research file. It happed to mention that the Mermaid was probably tilted on a 45 degree angle to allow the water to actually spout forward in a graceful arc.

            I was struck by this casual note. Of course! If she was vertical, the water would spout straight up and come back down on the poor Mermaid’s face! Tilted forward, the torso and the tail are incredibly well-balanced, and she resembles the forward-leaning ships’ figureheads of the era.

            So now, after a half century of misrepresentation, she leans again, and illustrates for our visitors the visual dynamism of early folk sculpture. 

The Warrior Mermaid

Sometimes the complexity behind even the simplest work of American folk art can be astounding. The Fenimore Art Museum has had this work, “Maremaid” by Mary Ann Willson (painted about 1800-1825) on view in our galleries since it was purchased by our benefactor Stephen C. Clark from legendary folk art collector Jean Lipman in 1950. It is a bright, beautiful work of art, but for the most part it only merits passing notice as a depiction of a mermaid with all of the usual associations with sailors and the sea.

Way off base here. When this artist was discovered in the 1940s, a group of watercolors by her acquired by the Harry Stone Gallery in New York came with a mid-19th-century letter by an anonymous “Admirer of Art” that gave some background on the artist. The letter reads, in part:

The artist, Miss Willson and her friend, Miss Brundage, came from one of our eastern States and made their home in the town of Greenville, Green County, New York….One was the farmer (Miss Brundage)…while the other (Mary Ann Willson) made pictures….These two maids left their home in the East with a romantic attachment for each other and which continued until the death of the “farmer maid.” The artist was inconsolable, and after a brief time, removed to parts unknown.

Okay, so a publically acknowledged (and presumably accepted) same-sex union in the first two decades of the 19th century definitely distinguishes Miss Willson as ahead of her time. But it goes further than that.

This is no ordinary mermaid.

It is an extremely clever picture loaded with puns and classical allusions. First of all, a mermaid is supposed to hold a comb and a mirror; at least that’s how they were depicted in signs, tradecards and weathervanes of the era (see below, from the Shelburne Museum). Willson’s figure holds a bow and arrow (which sports tines rather than feathers!). And what’s up with the hairdo? One side – the right – is lopped off. A number of scholars see the combination of images as a clear allusion to the classical tradition of the fearsome female Amazon warriors, who had their right breasts removed to make them better archers. The tail includes iconography of a more domestic sort: the “scales” resemble clamshell quilting patterns popular at the time.


Lastly, the title, “Maremaid,” a clever pun that includes the Latin word for “sea” (Mare) and also calls to mind the artist’s name, Mary.

So this unique little watercolor hangs in our galleries in its unassuming way, offering its secrets now only to those curious enough to stop and read the label beside it. Every so often, you can hear a visitor’s gasp all the way to the admissions desk in the lobby.