Winding Up
Framed: 27 x 23 5/8 x 3 1/4 inches (68.58 x 60.01 x 8.26 cm)
- 211
Twelfth Annual Exhibition, National Academy of Design, New York, April 21–June 4, 1837, no. 291 (as Courtship).
Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by William Sidney Mount, 1807–1868, Brooklyn Museum, N.Y., January 23–March 8, 1942, no. 41.
William Sidney Mount and His Circle: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by William Sidney Mount, with a Group of Works by His Friends and Contemporaries, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, January 31–April 1, 1945, no. 5.
The Mount Brothers, Suffolk Museum, Stony Brook, N.Y., August 23–September 28, 1947, no. 68.
Painter of Rural America: William Sidney Mount, 1807–1868, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., November 23, 1968–January 5, 1969; City Art Museum of St. Louis, January 18–February 15, 1969; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 3–April 15, 1969; M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, May 1–31, 1969, no. 11.
Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Mo., December 2, 1977–January 22, 1978, no. 67.
Genre, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., April 5–May 15, 1983, no. 37.
A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977–1987, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Mo., October 14–December 6, 1987, no. 70.
America in Art: Fifty Great Paintings Celebrating Fifty Years, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Calif., June 6–August 11, 1991, unnumbered.
William Sidney Mount: Painter of American Life, New-York Historical Society, August 14–October 25, 1998; Frick Art Museum, Pittsburgh, PA, November 19, 1998–January 10, 1999; Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, February 5–April 4, 1999; Museums at Stony Brook, N.Y., June 12–September 26, 1999, unnumbered (Fort Worth, only).
The title Winding Up has a double meaning. It refers to the ball of yarn the woman winds from the skein around her suitor's hands and to the stage of their courtship. The artist, however, leaves it to the viewer to guess the final outcome of the relationship.
To John Glover, Fairfield, Conn., and New York, 1836;
to John Henry Glover (his son), Fairfield, Conn., by descent;
to Charlotte Le Roy Glover (daughter of John Henry Glover), New York, by descent, after 1902;
to Helen Le Roy Smith (Mrs. Malcolm E. Smith, granddaughter of John Henry Glover), New York, by
descent, after 1932;
(Peter H. Davidson & Co., New York, after 1975);
to NAMA, 1977.
William Sidney Mount Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm reel SM2, frame 690 (as Courtship or Winding Up).
“The Fine Arts: William Sidney Mount,” New-York Mirror 14 (December 24, 1836), 206.
“Exhibition, National Academy of Design— Concluded,” New-Yorker 3 (June 17, 1837), 205 (as Courtship).
“The Fine Arts: The National Academy of Design. Concluded,” New-York Mirror 14 (June 17, 1837), 407 (as Courtship).
Catalogue of the Twelfth Annual Exhibition, exh. cat. (New York: National Academy of Design, 1837), 15, 19 (as Courtship).
William Sidney Mount to Edward Carey, January 9, 1842, Historical Society of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia (as Courtship).
Jonathan Sturges to William Sidney Mount, December 30, 1842, New-York Historical Society.
Charles Lanman, Letters from a Landscape Painter (Boston: J. Munroe, 1845), 244–46.
William Sidney Mount to W. Schaus, November 14, 1849, New-York Historical Society.
W. A. Jones, “A Sketch of the Life and Character of William S. Mount,” American Whig Review 14 (August 1851),
124 (as The Courtship).
Whitney Journal [Mount’s diary], November 14,1852, Museums at Stony Brook, N.Y. (as Courtship or Winding Up).
William Sidney Mount, “Catalogue of Portraits and Pictures Painted by William Sidney Mount,” Museums at Stony Brook, N.Y. (as Courtship or Winding Up).
Charles Lanman, Haphazard
Personalities: Chiefly of Noted Americans (Boston: Lee and Shepard; New
York:
C. T. Dillingham, 1886), 171.
Edward P. Buffet, “William Sidney Mount, a
Biography: The Story of Old-Time Life in Brookhaven North, Told through His
Pictures,” Port Jefferson (N.Y.) Times,
December 1, 1923–June 12, 1924, pt. 13, William Sidney Mount,
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, microfilm reel N737 (as Courtship).
Catalogue of an Exhibition of Drawings and Paintings by William Sidney Mount, 1807–1868, exh. cat. (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn Museum, 1942), 18.
Mary Bartlett Cowdrey and Hermann Warner Williams Jr., William Sidney Mount, 1807– 1868: An American Painter (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), xi, 5, 12, 17, 50, fig. 24.
Mary Bartlett Cowdrey, “Rural Genre and Anecdote from a Bygone America: William Mount and His Circle Seen at the Metropolitan,” Art News 43 (February 1–14, 1945), 29.
“William Sidney Mount: Painter Made Long Island His Italy,” LIFE (June 25, 1945), 67.
William Sidney Mount and His Circle: An Exhibition of Paintings and Drawings by William Sidney Mount, with a Group of Works by His Friends and Contemporaries, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1945), unpaginated.
The Mount Brothers, exh. cat. (Stony Brook, N.Y.: Suffolk Museum, 1947), 31, 44.
James Thomas Flexner, History of American Painting, vol. 3, That Wilder Image: The Native School from Thomas Cole to Winslow Homer (New York: Dover Publications, 1962), 27.
Alfred Frankenstein, Painter of Rural America: William Sidney Mount, 1807–1868, exh.
cat. (Stony Brook, N.Y.:
Suffolk Museum, 1968), 18, 22–23.
Alfred Frankenstein, William Sidney Mount (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975), 27, 52, 76–77, 99, 159, 249, 469, 483, 488, pl. 10 (as Winding Up and Courtship).
Donald Hoffmann, “American Exhibit Unveils 5 New Gifts to Nelson,” Kansas City Times (December 2, 1977), 1A, 8A.
“Pictures at an Exhibition,” Independent (Kansas City, Mo.) (December 3, 1977), 16.
“Kemper Gifts to the Nelson,” Kansas City Times (December 6, 1977), 34.
“American Painting Exhibit Comes to Nelson Gallery,” Johnson County Sun (Kansas City, Mo.) (December 9, 1977), 5B.
Donald Hoffmann, “Images from a New Land,” Kansas City Star (December 11, 1977), 1D.
“Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Gallery Events (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts), December 1977, unpaginated, cover.
Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1977), frontispiece, 57, 162.
“Kaleidoscope of American Painting: Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” Gallery Events (William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts), January 1978, unpaginated.
“Art across North America,” Apollo 107 (April 1978), 328.
William L. McCorkle, “Nelson Gallery Sets
Acquisition Record,” Kansas City Star
(July 16, 1978), 2B.
Ralph T. Coe, “Valuable Gifts,” letter to the editor, Kansas City Star (May 7, 1980), 18A.
Ross E. Taggart, “American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri,” Antiques 122 (November 1982), 1032.
Genre, exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1983), 5, 16, 28.
Donald Hoffmann, “Kemper Family Donates $1.5 Million Portrait,” Kansas City Star (October 12, 1986), 12A.
Sarah Burns, “Yankee Romance: The Comic Courtship Scene in Nineteenth-Century American Art,” American Art Journal 18, no. 4 (1986), 52–53, 57, 69–70.
A Bountiful Decade: Selected Acquisitions, 1977–1987. exh. cat. (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson–Atkins Museum of Art, 1987), 162–63, 261.
H. Nichols B. Clark, Francis W. Edmonds: American Master in the Dutch Tradition (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1988), 104.
William Kloss, America in Art: Fifty Great Paintings Celebrating Fifty Years, exh. cat. (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Santa Barbara Museum of Art, 1991), 74–75.
Henry Adams, Handbook of American Paintings in the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1991), 63–64.
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), 233.
Michael
Churchman and Scott Erbes, High Ideals
and Aspirations: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art 1933–1993 (Kansas City,
Mo.: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1993), 100.
Deborah J. Johnson, William Sidney Mount: Painter of American Life, exh. cat. (New York: American Federation of Arts, 1998), 39, 129, 149.
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).
