Artifact World Gallery
Get the iOS app

Jane Storm Teller by Phillips, Ammi

Phillips, Ammi · c. 1835

For over a hundred years, this portrait was a mystery. Ammi Phillips painted it around 1835, but the sitter's identity was lost to time. She was known only as 'Woman in a White Bonnet,' her name and history erased, leaving just a quiet face staring out from the canvas. The painting now lives in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum.

Look at how Phillips frames her face. The wide white collar and the lace bonnet create a bright frame around her dark eyes, pulling your focus directly to her steady gaze. The red book is the boldest color in the painting, a clear signal of literacy and intellect in a time when such a trait was a point of pride for a woman of her standing.

Ammi Phillips was a prolific itinerant portraitist who traveled the borderlands of New York, Connecticut, and Massachusetts. He painted ordinary, prosperous people, farmers, merchants, and their wives, with a distinctive flatness and a sharp eye for a face. His work slipped into obscurity after his death, and many of his portraits were later 'found' anonymous in attics and estates, their stories waiting to be pieced back together.

Jane Storm Teller's name was eventually recovered through painstaking research into the painting's provenance and the family it came from. Her portrait is no longer just an image of a vanished woman, it is a record of recovery. What do you notice first when you look at her face?

Details

For over a century, no one knew who she was.
For over a century, no one knew who she was.
Her name, her family, her whole history, gone.
Her name, her family, her whole history, gone.
She was called 'Woman in a White Bonnet.' A ghost in a frame.
She was called 'Woman in a White Bonnet.' A ghost in a frame.
But the dress and the book were always telling the truth.
But the dress and the book were always telling the truth.
This red book signals literacy and intellectual virtue.
This red book signals literacy and intellectual virtue.
Transcript

For over a century, no one knew who she was. Her name, her family, her whole history, gone. She was called 'Woman in a White Bonnet.' A ghost in a frame. But the dress and the book were always telling the truth. This red book signals literacy and intellectual virtue. The clues were there. The bonnet dates her to exactly 1835. Decades later, her name was finally recovered: Jane Storm Teller.