George and Emma Eastman
Framed: 60 3/8 × 72 1/2 inches (153.35 × 184.15 cm)
American Folk Art, Painting, and Sculpture, Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, February 22–March 18, 1932, no. 4 (as Unknown, A Fashionable Inn—New York).
Centennial Exhibition, Albright Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y., July 1–August 1, 1932, no. 44 (as Fashionable Inn, New York).
American Folk Art: The Art of the Common Man in America, 1750–1900, Museum of Modern Art, New York, November 30, 1932–February 28, 1934 (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., only), unnumbered, not in cat.
Children in Art, Wichita Art Museum, KS, December 7, 1937–unknown date, unnumbered (as C. Chalis, A Fashionable Inn).
Early Architecture of Utica and Vicinity, Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, N.Y., April 1–June 24, 1951, no cat.
Rediscovered Painters of Upstate New York, 1700–1875, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, NY, June 14–September 15, 1958; Rochester Memorial Art Gallery, NY, September 26–October 21, 1958; Albany Institute of History and Art, NY, October 30–November 20, 1958; Munson Williams-Proctor Institute, Utica, NY, November 30–December 21, 1958; Syracuse Museum of Fine Arts, NY, January 4–25, 1959; New-York Historical Society, New York, February 1–28, 1959, no. 18.
By Heart and Hand: American Folk Art in Missouri Collections, Saint Louis Art Museum, February 23–May 20, 1984, no cat.
To Peter Sylvester Eastman (father of the sitters), Washington Mills, N.Y., 1850;
to George Elliot Eastman (the boy in the painting), Washington Mills, N.Y., by descent, 1891;
to George W. and Archie D. Eastman (sons of George Elliot Eastman), Saquoit and Washington Mills, N.Y., respectively, by descent;
to (William A. Gough, Bridgeport, Conn., 1931);
to (American Folk Art Gallery with Downtown Gallery, New York, 1931);
purchased from Downtown Gallery by the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1933.
“‘A Fashionable Inn, New York’—Anonymous Painter,” Chicago Post, [1931], clipping, NAMA curatorial files.
American Ancestors: Masterpieces by Little Known and Anonymous American Painters, 1790–1890, exh. cat. (New York: Downtown Gallery, 1931), unpaginated (as Anonymous, A Fashionable Inn, New York).
Virginia Nirdlinger, “In the New York Galleries,” Parnassus 4 (January 1932), 40 (as Fashionable Inn).
Florence Davies, “Forward and Backward,” Detroit News, February 14, 1932, Arts sec., 1 (as Anonymous, A Fashionable Inn).
Holger Cahill, “American Folk-Art,” Formes 23 (March 1932), 231 (as Anonymous, A Fashionable Inn, New York).
A Catalogue of the First Exhibition in the New Galleries of the Society of Arts and Crafts of American Folk Art, Painting, and Sculpture, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Society of Arts and Crafts, 1932), 3 (as Unknown, A Fashionable Inn—New York).
Centennial Exhibition, exh. cat. (Buffalo, N.Y.: Albright Art Gallery, 1932), 8 (as Fashionable Inn, New York).
Downtown Gallery Records, 1924–1974, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., microfilm reel 5611, frame 877 (as Fashionable Inn).
“Art: The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art Acquires Seven Examples of American Folk Art, Including an Old Model Weather Vane of Unusual Merit,” Kansas City Star, March 19, 1933, 13A (as Fashionable Inn by Chalis).
“The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art: Complete Catalogue of Paintings and Drawings,” Art News 32 (December 9, 1933), 28 (as C. Chalis, Fashionable Inn).
Handbook of the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1933), 136 (as C. Chalis, Fashionable Inn).
“Folk Art to Gallery,” Kansas City Times, February 2, 1934, 11.
“Display Famed Paintings Here,” Wichita (Kans.) Beacon, December 5, 1937, B7 (as The Fashionable Inn by C. Chalis).
Alice Ford, Pictorial Folk Art New England to California (New York: Studio Publications, 1949), 69 (as Artist unknown, Fashionable Inn [New York]).
“Sold for a Song, Painting Now Rates as Masterpiece,” Utica (N.Y.) Observer-Dispatch, May 20, 1951, 7B (as A Fashionable Inn).
Winifred Shields, “Painting Arises from Obscurity and Reveals an American Story,” Kansas City Star, July 27, 1951, 16 (as A Fashionable Inn).
Agnes Halsey Jones, Rediscovered Painters of Upstate New York, 1700–1875, exh. cat. (Utica, N.Y.: Munson- Williams-Proctor Institute, 1958), 25.
Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 255.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 250.
Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1031, 1033.
Cynthia Sutherland, “The Search for the Elusive C. Balis,” The Clarion: America’s Folk Art Magazine 13 (Fall 1984), 54–59, 60nn1–4, 61.
Sotheby’s, New York, June 26, 1987, lot 47.
Paul
D’Ambrosio and Charlotte Emans, Folk
Art’s Many Faces: Portraits in the New York State Historical Association (Cooperstown,
N.Y.: The Association, 1987), 27n5.
Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art,
1991), 38–39.
Roger Ward and Patricia J. Fidler, eds. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collections. 6th ed. (New York: Hudson Hills Press, in association with Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 228, 233 (as George and Emma Eastman [A Fashionable Inn]).
Margaret C. Conrads, ed. The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: American Paintings to 1945 (Kansas City, Mo.: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2007), 1: 32–35, 2: 11–12.
