Thomas Mickell Burnham (Michigan/Massachusetts, 1818-1866) oil on canvas painting entitled The Farm Family, depicting a mother and three children in a horse-drawn wagon traveling along a county road while led by a large dog, 1846. Signed and inscribed "T.M. Burnham Pinxt 1846.," lower center. Old exhibition label en verso for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (June 8-July 30, 1967) and gallery label, approximately the same era, for Berry-Hill Galleries, New York. Housed in a gilt wood frame with name plate. Canvas: 29 1/4" H x 36 1/4" W. Frame: 34 3/4" H x 41 3/4" W. Literature: Daniel G. Carter, et al; The Painter and the New World: A Survey of Painting from 1564 to 1867 Marking the Founding of Canadian Confederation (Montreal, Quebec: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1967), cat. no. 254. Exhibtion History: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; The Painter and the New World: A Survey of Painting from 1564 to 1867 Marking the Founding of Canadian Confederation; June 9-July 30, 1967. Biographical Note: Raised in Boston, Thomas Burnham later lived in Detroit, Michigan where he became a sign painter and also gained some success as a portraitist and painter of genre scenes and landscapes. In the mid-19th century, he returned to Boston and then moved to Troy, New York where he painted–primarily from his imagination– the well-known depiction of the Lewis and Clark Expedition currently in the collection of Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. (Source: The Buffalo Bill Center of the West)

PROVENANCE: Private South Carolina Collection.

CONDITION: Overall very good condition. With craquelure throughout and frame abrasion with retouching primarily to lower edge. Canvas has been lined. Frame with scattered abrasions and gilt loss plus old tape inscribed "Burnham" affixed to top edge, not visible frontally.