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REBECCA FAULKNER FOSTER CLARKE
(1832-1927), 1852
Richard Morell Staigg (1817-1881)
watercolor on ivory
4 1/4 x 3 3/8 (10.7950 x 8.5725)
signed l.l., above shoulder, 'Staigg 1852'
Bequest of Dwight Foster Dunn, 1937
Weis #33
Hewes #52
More Information
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Rebecca Faulkner Foster was the youngest child of Alfred Dwight
Foster
(1800-52) and Lydia Stiles Foster. She and her older siblings,
Dwight
and Mary grew up in Worcester. The family traveled extensively.
During
1850, the family was journeying through the South visiting
Richmond, Virginia,
Charleston, South Carolina, New Orleans, Louisiana, Mobile,
Alabama, and
Savannah, Georgia. Her older Mary described some of their
adventures in
letters home to a friend, including a story about their stay in
Mobile
in March 1850: '[A]fter I was arrayed in my 'robe de nuit' - I
discovered
on the wall - a Centipede - I had no weapons to rise, and called
to 'Becca
in our parlor adjoining to bring me something with which to kill
it. She
could not get anything until its many legs had conveyed it under
the wardrobe.
Hetty found, on her return, Becca standing on the parlor sofa,
feet and
all, while I was sailing round half insane between my stomach ache
and
the recollections of the awful stories we had heard that day of
the poisonous
nature of centipedes.... After the commotion had somewhat subsided
we
discovered another and so went to bed with stockings and shoes on
and
I had my suspicions that the others did not undress at all.'(1)
The sisters
survived the journey and returned to Worcester at the end of the
year.
This miniature depicting Rebecca at age twenty, was commissioned
by her
older sister Mary two years after the southern trip. Mary paid the
English
artist Richard M. Staigg $100 for the portrait.(2) The miniature
is inscribed
with the date 1852. In August of that year the girls' father died
suddenly
and they each inherited a considerable portion of his estate. Mary
may
have been inspired to commission the miniature based on the death
of her
father or due to her sister's upcoming marriage. In May 1853,
Rebecca
left the Foster household to marry Dr. Henry Clarke (1824-80), who
established
a large medical practice in Worcester.(3)
The artist Richard M. Staigg, who was born in Leeds, England,
came to
the United States in 1831. He studied the art of miniature
painting with
Jane Stuart (1812-88) and eventually settled in Newport, Rhode
Island.
He moved to Boston in 1841 and exhibited his work at the Boston
Athenaeum.
Staigg quickly gained recognition for his flattering likenesses
and included
prominent Massachusetts politicians and members of Boston's social
elite
among his patrons. In 1852, shortly after completing this portrait
of
Rebecca Faulkner Foster, Staigg moved to New York City.(4)
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1) Mary Stiles Foster
to Sarah Bruce
Hill, March 19, 1850, Foster Family Papers 1740-1884, American
Antiquarian
Society Manuscript Collection.
2) Label on verso, in hand of Mary Stiles Foster: 'Painted by
Staigg for her
sister Mary S. Foster and paid for by her $100.'
3) Rufus Woodward, 'Dr. Henry Clarke,' Boston Medical and Surgical
Journal
(May 13, 1880), American Antiquarian Society Newsclipping File.
Although
Dr. Clarke never became a member of the American Antiquarian
Society, he
and his wife were generous donors of books and periodicals to the
Society's
library between 1877 and 1905. See Proceedings of the American
Antiquarian
Society (October 1877): 90; 11 (October 1896): 239; 13 (April 1899):
56;
and 17 (October 1905): 193.
4) Dale T. Johnson, American Portrait Miniatures in the Manney
Collection (New
York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1990), 204-5.
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