Feeding the Chickens
Signed lower right: B. Champney
Description
Feeding the Chickens was purchased by Vose Galleries from Bourne Auction in Hyannis in August of 1981, and a feature on the sale in the following month’s Antiques & Arts Weekly identified the figure as “Marguerite Caroline Falck, who was born on August 17, 1869, became the wife of Charles H. Taylor, Jr., December 2, 1890 at age 21, and died in 1949.” While the pastoral setting of Feeding the Chickens is not specifically located, Ms. Falck hailed from Woburn, Massachusetts, the same town that Champney lived in beginning in 1874, and was the same age as the artist’s daughter Alice, as both entered Woburn High School in 1885. One might surmise from the figure’s age that it was painted around or shortly before Marguerite’s 1890 marriage to Charles H. Taylor, Jr. (1867-1941), who followed in his father’s footsteps and because director and treasurer of the Boston Globe. After their marriage, Charles and Marguerite Taylor lived in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.
Provenance
Inscriptions
Labels
Previous Vose Galleries label, inventory no. 26859
Exhibitions
Literature
Condition
Very good. The painting was previously wax lined onto an aluminum interleaf, and has recently been cleaned. There are some thin lines of in-paint to the right of the open barn door and below the leaves of the middle part of the tree. Dark passages in the foreground align with the artist’s brushwork and appear to be his reworking/adding of details.
Frame Details
Carrig-Rohane frame, dated 1930
Description
Feeding the Chickens was purchased by Vose Galleries from Bourne Auction in Hyannis in August of 1981, and a feature on the sale in the following month’s Antiques & Arts Weekly identified the figure as “Marguerite Caroline Falck, who was born on August 17, 1869, became the wife of Charles H. Taylor, Jr., December 2, 1890 at age 21, and died in 1949.” While the pastoral setting of Feeding the Chickens is not specifically located, Ms. Falck hailed from Woburn, Massachusetts, the same town that Champney lived in beginning in 1874, and was the same age as the artist’s daughter Alice, as both entered Woburn High School in 1885. One might surmise from the figure’s age that it was painted around or shortly before Marguerite’s 1890 marriage to Charles H. Taylor, Jr. (1867-1941), who followed in his father’s footsteps and because director and treasurer of the Boston Globe. After their marriage, Charles and Marguerite Taylor lived in Boston’s Back Bay neighborhood.
Provenance
Inscriptions
Labels
Previous Vose Galleries label, inventory no. 26859
Exhibitions
Literature
Condition
Very good. The painting was previously wax lined onto an aluminum interleaf, and has recently been cleaned. There are some thin lines of in-paint to the right of the open barn door and below the leaves of the middle part of the tree. Dark passages in the foreground align with the artist’s brushwork and appear to be his reworking/adding of details.
Frame Details
Carrig-Rohane frame, dated 1930
