Mourning Picture by Mary Cleaves (1803-1871), Dorchester, Massachusetts, 1818. Watercolor on velvet, 22.5" x 18." Brick Store Museum Collection, 77.16. Gift of Mrs. John B. Corning.

Mary Cleaves studied at the Misses Martins' school in Portland, Maine between 1814 and 1815. By 1816, young Mary was enrolled in the academy of Judith Foster Saunders and Clementina Beach on Meeting House Hill at Dorchester, Massachusetts. Mary would have received instruction in ornamental needlework and painting, and a mourning picture--either painted or embroidered on silk--was often the culmination of a schoolgirl's artistic training. In July 1818, Mary wrote her sister saying that she had learned some painting and hoped to soon be skillful enough to render a mourning piece to give to her mother, honoring her own father's death (Daniel Cleaves had died in 1817 and had been married to Mary's mother, Sarah Fairfield Cleaves, for 22 years). Painting on velvet was more difficult than other techniques, so Mary's resulting work--pictured above--was undoubtedly among her finest efforts.

While many contemporary memorial paintings included figures, Mary's emphasized a burial monument with rose garlands set against a blue background and willow trees. The inscription on the pedestal reads: "In Memory / of Daniel Cleaves, Esq. / who died on Dec. 7th, 1817 aged 47 years. / The dead how sacred! Sacred / Is the dust of this heaven-laboure-ed / form, erect, divine!" The verse, as well as the composition, recalls other painted memorials made at the Saunders and Beach Academy.

Description excerpted from Agreeable Situations: Society, Commerce, and Art in Southern Maine, 1780-1830. Ed. by Laura Fecych Sprague (Northeastern University Press, 1987), pp 228.

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