Dressed to Kill, Dressed to Till
Lot 8:
THOMAS MICKELL BURNHAM. BOYS PLAYING PAW-PAW, C. 1839. Oil on canvas, 28 x 36 inches, within later frame. Thomas Mickell Burnham (1818-1866) was an American portrait, landscape and genre painter born in Boston, MA. He received informal arts training and completed his first trip abroad before relocating to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked in a sign painting shop in 1836. Two years later he opened his own art studio, in which he focused on genre art (often satirical in nature and related to his observed world, such as this piece) and portraiture. Burnham’s genre pieces often revolved around the youthful energies of children, white and black, perhaps serving as a mirror upon the boisterous energy and optimism of early American and especially frontier society, along with the ignorance and innate cruelties it often perpetuated. There are two versions of Boys Playing Paw-Paw attributed to Burnham and a related genre work, The Young Artist, one rendered in horizontal and the other in vertical format. The horizontal works share both format and other compositional elements of other works from the Detroit period, such as First State: Election Day, 1837. The blue linsey-woolsey farmer’s frock as worn by the young black laborer, can be contrasted against the tailored jackets and caps worn by the white youths, clearly members of the burgeoning middle-class; both elements are carried into The Young Artist, previously referred to above. In 1840, Burnham returned to Boston and remained in Massachusetts for the rest of his life. He exhibited one version of Boys Playing Paw-Paw at the National Academy of Design, the Boston Athenaeum, and the Apollo Assoc. between 1840-1842. Purchased from an Ohio collector, 2017.
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