In early March, this pair of portraits by the 19th-century itinerant artist Ammi Phillips will be coming up for sale at Stair Galleries. The portraits, painted in 1812-1813, are of Ashbel Stoddard and his wife, Patience Bolles Stoddard. Stoddard was an early settler in Hudson and started Hudson's first newspaper in April 1785, the same year the City of Hudson was incorporated. As part of the background information about the portraits, Walter Ritchie researched and wrote a comprehensive biography of Stoddard and his family in Hudson, which is recommended reading for all who are interested in Hudson history.
David Voorhees shared this comment:
ReplyDeleteThe sale of these portraits is all the more reason why the City of Hudson should have a public museum devoted to the history, arts, and ecology of Hudson.
Thank you Carole for posting this.
ReplyDeleteWalter Richies biography of the Stoddards is facinating.
I could not agree with Mr.Voorhees more.
I encourage anyone curious of Stoddard and of Hudson's early history, vis-a-vis its presses & debating societies, to pick up a recent book; Columbia Rising: Civil Life on the Upper Hudson from the Revolution to the Age of Jackson, by John L. Brooke. Although at times a dense read, its offers innumerable insights into the early political landscape of our region, how Hudson played a unique and yet under-appreciated role, & contextualizes the place of people like Stoddard in forming the civil society or our early republic.
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