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High Chest

Artist Isaac Barnitt (American, 1747 - 1793)
Dateca. 1770
MediumMahogany, poplar, yellow pine, and cedar
DimensionsOverall: 89 7/8 × 46 1/8 × 23 5/8 inches (228.27 × 117.16 × 60.01 cm)
A: 55 3/8 × 46 1/8 × 21 3/4 inches (140.65 × 117.16 × 55.25 cm)
B: 34 1/2 × 45 5/8 × 23 5/8 inches (87.63 × 115.89 × 60.01 cm)
Credit LinePurchase: William Rockhill Nelson Trust
Object number33-163 A,B
Signed(incised on bottom of proper right drawer of paired drawers in upper case): "Isaac Barnitt" Illegible lettering (possibly "RJ 66") located beneath Barnitt's signature.
On View
Not on view
Exhibition History
Origins: Collecting to Create the Nelson-Atkins, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, August 14, 2021-March 6, 2022.
Provenance

By descent to Minnie Owens, Philadelphia, PA, by 1933 [1];

Purchased from Owens by Roland L. Taylor, Philadelphia, PA;

With White, Allom and Co., New York, NY, by 1933;

Purchased from White, Allom and Co., through John Wise, Ltd., by The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.

NOTES:

[1] According to S. W. Woodhouse, Jr., former curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art, in a letter to Roland L. Taylor, February 28, 1933, copy in NAMA curatorial files: "When I first saw the highboy in the bedroom of Miss Minnie Owens at Sixteenth and Locust streets, she informed me that it had come to her sister and her by inheritance from Anne, the daughter of Nathan Garrett of Darby; and Anne Oborn, the daughter of Eliza Knowles and niece of Anne Garrett's husband; through the Grays (from whom Gray's Ferry takes its name) to their parents. Their father was General Owens of the Pennsylvania Troops in the Civil War. They removed it from the old house in Darby. The highboy never had been out of their family until it was purchased by you."

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