Artist/Maker

Foster, Elizabeth

Place Made

Date Made

1804

Medium

silk on silk, watercolor

Dimensions

HOA: 10; WOA: 9

Accession Number

4062

Description

DESCRIPTION: Silk floss on a silk background with watercolor faces and sky. Two gentlemen in the foreground, one in standard late eighteenth-century attire, the other in tunic, cape and feathered hat. At the feet of the men are two dogs. Behind the men is a wooden fence. In the background on the left is a seated man wearing early eighteenth-century attire. In the background on the right is a standing man in mid-eighteenth century attire.

MAKER: Elizabeth Foster (1789-1872) was born in Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania to Jonathan and Elizabeth (Greenwood) Foster. By 1809, she and her family had moved to Winchester, Virginia, where she married William Alexander Baker (1788-1847). Elizabeth’s father, Jonathan Foster (1766-1824), was a Revolutionary War veteran, a school teacher, a printer, and publisher of the Winchester newspaper, The Constellation. William A. Baker was a Winchester merchant based on Loudoun Street and later worked as a piano forte maker.

History

TITLE: The title “Jolly Irishman” has been given to this piece tentatively. The words appeared on the cardboard backboard. However, this backboard appears to be a recycled board, and the words may not refer to this piece. The source of this image has not been found.

INSCRIPTION: In pencil on cherry backboard “Made by/ Elizabeth Foster/ wife of/ Wm. Alexander Baker/ 1804” and “Worked by Mother/at — 1/2 years of age—/ brought by myself at/ sale June 20th [?] 1872. J. [or S.] Baker.” “3 Jolly Irishman/ St. Patrick & __________”

Artist Biography

MAKER: Elizabeth Foster was born about 1790. We believe she was the daughter of Jonathan Foster, who founded the newspaper “The Constellation” in Winchester, Virginia, in 1809. This may be the same Jonathan Foster who ran the Water Street Academy in Alexandria in 1805, the year the needlework was made. If this proves to be true, then Elizabeth may have been a student of Mrs. O’Reilley, who moved her needlework school from Baltimore to Alexandria in the same year. On July 11, 1809 Elizabeth married William Alexander Baker, whose family had settled in Winchester two generations earlier. Baker was a merchant at the time of his marriage, though his 1847 will lists a farm. Elizabeth and William had at least five children, three girls and two boys. Elizabeth Foster’s husband, William Alexander Baker was an ensign in the 31st Regiment of the Virginia Militia. (Minutes of the Frederick County Virginia Court for May 5, 1812)

Credit Line

MESDA Purchase Fund