An Exceptional Two-Tiered Fruit Still Life Oil Painting, by Mary Mellen, C. 1850

Mary Blood Mellen (American Female Artist, 1819-1882)

A Large and Exceptional Two-Tiered Fruit Still Life Oil on Canvas Painting, circa 1850

Signed lower right: Mellen Inscribed possibly by the artist's hand on the stretcher bar: To be sent to Sowle & Ward's for Miss C. A. Rice

This sumptuous two-tier display of fruit and elegant glassware is the largest and most ambitious still-life painting known to have been produced by Mary Blood Mellen (1819-1882), an American Female artist best known for her luminous marines strongly indebted to the style of Fitz Henry Lane. Indeed, still lifes from her hand are extremely rare. The present work is very close to the style of still life popularized by the Prussian-American artist Severin Roesen (1805-1882) who specialized in the genre during the middle decades of the nineteenth century and is signed as Roesen sometimes signed his own efforts, at lower right, as a curly trompe-l'oeil grape tendril, which reads in this case "Mellen."

Until quite recently, Mary Blood Mellen was described in histories of American art exclusively as a copyist, notably of Lane. But as more research into her life and work has been undertaken, that picture of her achievement has been substantially revised and refined. Mellen was, in fact, Lane's pupil, and a copyist of his work. But owing to the skill she developed working with him in his Gloucester studio, Mellen evolved into an artist in her own right, working alongside him as a sometimes collaborator on the same pictures-their work often being so similar that it is frequently difficult to tell it apart. Mellen and Lane also formed a fast friendship. She also painted ravishing moonlit marine compositions of her own invention, as well as nostalgic New England landscapes in her own style.

At a 2007 scholarly conference held at Spanierman Galleries in New York in conjunction with the exhibition, "Fitz Henry Lane and Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries" held at the Cape Ann Historical Museum, there was a small footnote to the effect that Mellen was also known to have copied works by other artists, including Alfred Bricher and Severin Roesen (See Report on Scholars' Gathering in Association with the Exhibition "Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries," 2007, p. 5.) How she encountered works by those figures, particularly Roesen who was active primarily in New York City and eastern and central Pennsylvania, remains speculative. Certainly, copying other artists' work was an aspect of nearly every artist's training at the time Mellen was active as a painter.

Mellen was born in Vermont in 1819 to parents who were originally from Massachusetts. She was educated at the Quaker's Fryville Seminary in Bolton, Massachusetts, where she would have learned artistic crafts including theorem painting and still life. In 1840, she married the Reverend Charles W. Mellen and moved around for his religious posts. They lived in southern Massachusetts during the 1840s, in upstate New York during the 1850s, and in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in the 1860s. Her brother-in-law's appointment as pastor of the Universalist Church in Gloucester, Massachusetts in April 1855 may have been the event which prompted Mellen to come into contact with Fitz Henry Lane of Gloucester (See J. Wilmerding, "The Lane-Mellen Association," Fitz Henry Lane & Mary Blood Mellen: Old Mysteries and New Discoveries, Spanierman Gallery, New York, 2007, p. 40).

In any event, Mellen's connections with Boston and eastern Massachusetts align with a compelling inscription that can be seen on the reverse of the painting, incised into the stretcher bar in a nineteenth-century hand (possibly Mellen's own?): "To be sent to Sowle & Ward's for Miss C. A. Rice." Sowle & Ward was a Boston gallery that later became the noted firm of Doll and Richards. It operated under the name of Sowle & Ward from 1850 to 1860 and had two different Beacon Hill locations: at 42 Cornhill Street (1850-1855), and at 14 Summer (1856-1860). Since the business changed names both before and after that decade, this strongly suggests that the painting was produced between 1850 and 1860. Miss C. A. Rice was quite possibly the intended recipient of the painting-indeed its first owner.

Whether Mellen's still life is a work of her own invention painted closely in emulation of Roesen, or a direct copy after a lost work by Roesen is unknown. Although it is not a direct copy of any of Roesen's paintings included in Judith O'Toole's catalogue raisonné on the artist, the still life faithfully repeats several of Roesen's favorite props and fruit motifs including the white porcelain compote, champagne flute with two rings near the base, the long slice of watermelon, a sectioned orange with skin still on it, plums in a wicker basket, and a white plate cantilevering over the table edge.

The two-tier composition in the landscape format and the specific motifs represented are both characteristic of Roesen's works from the period between 1850 and 1860. Two especially close comparisons to the present work are in the Brooklyn Museum of Art datable to circa 1860 (O'Toole, Figure 49), and a work formerly in the Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, and now in the D'Amour Museum of Fine Arts, Springfield, Massachusetts (acc. No. 1.94.1) (O'Toole, Figure 13). This work entitled Abundance has dimensions very close to Mellen's painting (35.5 x 49 inches).

The last time this painting appeared on the market was in 1962, at Parke-Bernet Galleries in New York. At the time of that auction, the identity of Mary Blood Mellen was yet largely unknown, and the signature was amusingly and unconvincingly described in the cataloguing as "probably a whimsy of the painter [Roesen], who was known to be something of an inebriate." In Judith O'Toole's catalogue on Roesen, the painting was misdescribed as having been signed "F. Mellon."

PROVENANCE: [with]Sowle & Ward, Boston, Massachusetts, circa 1850-60; Possibly Miss C. A. Rice;
Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, October 17, 1962, no. 78, (as Severin Roesen);
Estate in Larchmont, New York; Private collection, New York, acquired from the above.

LITERATURE: Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, catalogue, October 17, 1962, pp. 44-45, no. 78, illustrated (as Severin Roesen);
J. H. O'Toole, Severin Roesen, London, 1992, p. 65 (erroneously listed as the work of F. Mellon).

Canvas: 35" high x 49" wide
Frame: 48" high x 62" wide

Good condition, ready to hang.