Lizzie Borden Society Forum

Susan Parrish Antiques & Americana
www.directiques.com
SHIP PAINTING OF THE D.M. ANTHONY
Type: Painting
Era: 19th Century
Origin: American
Style: Americana
Maker: D. Willow
Description and Provenance
19th century ship painting of the D. M. Anthony, signed D. Willow.
Price Please Contact Dealer for Price Quantity 1


Gramma

You must be a mind reader! I have been thinking to myself that I really need to learn the differences in the ships of that day. It is instinctive on my part to say "Sloop" but I really have no idea and a trip to Salem is definitely in order.
I had no idea there had been a ship of that name and I need to find the owner and builder.
Would love to own it but when they say call for a price you know what that means!

Gramma

Looks like it may be a three-masted schooner.

Gramma

edit

Well, neither can quite make their living at fine painting but it's not for lack of trying for 25 years, in our brother's case.

Gramma- do you like the painting or the ship?

It is the idea that this was painted at the time of the ship that gets my attention. Heaven knows there are enough paintings out there of ships but not of this particular ship at this particular time in history. The fact there was a D M Anthony sailing on the seas was a new fact for me to handle. I am still trying to find the builder and owner and Captain. Was it before or after the murders? I vote before.

Gramma

How do you do that?
Have you contacted the Fall River Marine Museum?

Going to contact the Maritime Museum and New Bedford soon.
Do you think that is the Borden Flats light in the painting. If not what light is it?

Gramma

The light visible on the right? If you look closely at it, it's land-based. The Borden Flats light appears to be more of a "reckoning buoy" or something of that nature.

The photo... or rather the light in the painting... actually reminds me of the Boston Light on Little Brewster Island. See what you think...

Whoops... I found that at http://www.lighthousegetaway.com/lights/boston.html

Yeah, the Boston light is a candidate. It is hard to tell unless I check all the lights on the cape.

Gramma

The light reminds me somewhat of the original Clark's Point lighthouse at the southern point of New Bedford. It is also, however, very similar to the many generic lighthouses that artists added to the paintings and engravings of ships in the 1800s. It was a very common motif to stick a lighthouse into a painting someplace.

Lighthouse Digest

Clark's Point Light? Somehow that rings a...oh yes, here it is:

"Local merchants erected a wooden beacon at Clark's Point, at the southern entrance to New Bedford Harbor, in 1797. Not much is known of this early structure. The first lighthouse erected by the government at Clark's Point was a 42-foot stone tower built in 1804 to help guide whalers and other vessels entering the harbor from Buzzards Bay. The workers who raised the new beacon celebrated with a 100-gallon pot of chowder."

There's a bit more, plus what's purported to be a photo of the first Clark's Point Light, at http://www.lighthouse.cc/clarkspoint/history.html

I wonder... I have a small collection of cold cast porcelain light houses. The Clark's Point Light just might be one...I know I have one that looks very similar.

Doug65oh,

It seems you read my post before I came back and edited in the link and image. The version you posted has a nice photo of my friend Art Motta, New Bedford's Tourism/Marketing Director.

That'll teach me to scroll further down next time! (I missed the photo you referred to on first look, but see it now.)

That's a beautiful spot there...

After looking at lights at http://www.lighthouse.cc I had decided on either Clark's Point or Cuttyhunk which is in the Elizabeth Islands just off New Bedford and visible on good clear days from Horseneck Beach.
I know they probably took artistic license but usually an artist did a general shape of a light and meant it to represent a specific place.
What is that in the background on the lefthand side of the painting? Is that a steamship like the Fall River Line?


Gramma

There's no way to identify the thing on the left at this resolution. It almost has the look of a building on another spit of land, though.


Not completely off topic:

"The largest village in Freetown is Assonet (Freetown P.O.), which is pleasantly situated in the northern part of the town and contains three general stores, in one of which is the post-office, a blacksmith shop, paint shop, livery stable, and the gun works of N.R. Davis & Son, who conduct a large business in the manufacture of sporting goods; this is the largest industry in town and was started years ago in a small way. The Assonet River flows through the village and on it are located the large slaughter house of D. M. Anthony & Co. of Fall River; a large saw and waste mill and an old grist mill."

Our County and its People, a Descriptive and Biographical Record of Bristol County, Massachusetts, The Boston History Co., Boston, MA, 1899, p. 190

From ship to lighthouses to history of the area- I think this is a cool continuous topic that evolves naturally.
Did the waste go directly into the water?

Rivers, lakes, and the ocean were considered appropriate places to dispose of numerous waste items even when I was growing up. I remember people using them like a huge sink to wash in. The only problem is there is no drain or septic tank attached. Mother nature can only absorb so much. The Taunton River was so polluted when I was a girl when we swam in it (yup, I did!) we watched things from toilets upstream go floating by. After the first sighting on my part I didn't swim there anymore, needless to say! Most of the sewage at the time and definitly earlier was dumped, raw, into the river.

As for Freetown, the records for the Davis family are in the Vital Records book I have and he is noted as a gun dealer. I think is son was, too. That book is not at my fingertips at the moment, but, if I remember correctly, there was a Dartmouth connection. I'll have to check on that.
The D M Anthony Slaughterhouse was on Steep Brook.
Gramma

please refesh my memory on the Cameron connection?

I think my brother or Susan's brother could paint better than that.

Sorry, Kat, I didn't see that post until now, actually Stephen's work is mostly people, I don't think he'd ever paint a ship, even if you paid him to do it. Now, your house might be another story, if you wanted a portrait of it or you wanted the inside or outside of it painted, he'd be your man.

Gramma @ Wed Apr 28, 2004 10:20 pm wrote: The D M Anthony Slaughterhouse was on Steep Brook.
Gramma

How close to where Joseph Lemay saw the bloody man with the hatchet in the woods?