Still Life with Pitcher and Wicker Chair

"Stoneware Pitcher and Wooden Bowl on an Wicker Chair" (11"X14", Oil on Canvas, SOLD)

All these things came from my grandmother's house after she passed. The chair and bowl are from the 1840's. In fact, the chair is said to be from Abraham Lincoln's White House. I won't go into the full story here, but suffice to say that I have two Lincoln White House chairs.

The pitcher was a gift from an artist couple that my grandparents knew. My grandfather was an artist, as well as the art editor at a couple New York art magazines. So they knew lots of artists and my grandfather (who I never knew) was a real charmer. Lots of gifts came into their house over the years. This stoneware pitcher was made by M.A. Hadly. I don't know if that's a famous artist now, but that's what's on the bottom of the pitcher. It's really quite nice, with its cobalt-painted horse design.

The bowl is probably more collectible, as it's quite old and carved from a single large block of wood. The bowl and the pitcher both sit on the same red paisley-patterned spread that's seen in other posts. The painting was done in my old apartment on Beacon St in Brookline. It was an old and quite large apartment and a bit of the floor molding peeks up to the right of the bowl. The walls were horsehair plaster-and-lath construction with layers of wallpaper over that, and one of the many cracks in the paper shows itself on the whitewashed wall.