Attributed to Winthrop Chandler (1747–1790), Overmantel Panel Fragment, Putnam, Connecticut, 1768–1790.
Oil on panel, 31 x 42 inches. Private Collection. Image courtesy West Lake Conservators Ltd.

After the publication in this magazine of our article “Winthrop Chandler: The First American Painter of American Landscapes” (Summer 2013), Linda Carter Lefko, historic decorative painter and advisor to the Rufus Porter Museum in Bridgton, Maine, contacted us about a fragment from a painted overmantel panel (Fig. 1). Comparing this example to an overmantel from the Ebenezer Waters House in West Sutton, Massachusetts (Sotheby’s, The Bertram K. Little and Nina Fletcher Little Collection, Part II, Lot 739 [1994]), it appears evident that Chandler was also the artist of this panel. The two overmantels share almost identical images of a gentleman wearing a tricorn hat riding on a prancing horse, and of a courting couple in an amorous embrace. Some additional features of this overmantel fragment include an elderly man on a donkey, a buck being attacked by a dog, a squirrel sitting on a tree stump, a flying dragonfly, and a flicker and robin in a tree.

This overmantel panel fragment was discovered in the 1920s by a builder dismantling several historic houses on land soon-to-be flooded in Putnam, Connecticut, adjacent to Woodstock where Chandler lived. The panel was covered by faux bois grained paint and was trimmed on one side. It was inherited by the builder’s daughter, Jane Butler, who moved to Virginia where she was restoring an old house. In the 1980s she gave the panel to the present owner’s parents who were also restoring an old Virginia farmhouse. The couple began to strip it down to the bare wood when they noticed the painted image underneath. The panel was inherited by the couple’s daughter, who recently had it conserved by Susan Blakney, chief conservator at West Lake Conservators Ltd.; it had undergone minimal conservation in 1992.

This article was originally published in the Anniversary 2015 issue of Antiques & Fine Art magazine, a digitized version of which is available on afamag.com. Antiques & Fine Art, AFAmag, AFAnews, and AFA Publishing are affiliated with InCollect.com.