Eunice Griswold Holcombe Pinney (February 9, 1770 – 1849) was an American folk artist active in the towns of

Windsor Windsor may refer to: Places Australia * Windsor, New South Wales ** Municipality of Windsor, a former local government area * Windsor, Queensland, a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland **Shire of Windsor, a former local government authority around Wi ...

and

Simsbury, Connecticut Simsbury is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 24,517 at the 2020 census. The town was incorporated as Connecticut's 21st town in May 1670. History Early history At the beginning of the 17th century, the ...

. According to art historian

Jean Lipman Jean Herzberg Lipman (1909 – June 20, 1998) was an American artist, collector, and art historian, a pioneer in the study of American folk art. Biography A native of Manhattan, where she was born Jean Herzberg, Lipman grew up in Midtown before ...

, a specialist in American folk painting, Pinney and her contemporary

Mary Ann Willson Mary Ann Willson (active 1810 to 1825) was an American folk artist whose work remained undiscovered for over a century, until it appeared in an exhibition of American Primitive paintings in 1944. Little is known of her life, but evidence sugges ...

are considered two of the earliest American painters to work in the medium of watercolor.

Life

Pinney was a well-educated woman from an influential Connecticut family. She was a descendant of Matthew Griswold, who emigrated from Kenilworth, England, to

Windsor, Connecticut Windsor is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States, and was the first English settlement in the state. It lies on the northern border of Connecticut's capital, Hartford. The population of Windsor was 29,492 at the 2020 census. Po ...

, in 1639 and became an active participant in the political affairs of the Colony. The marriage of Eunice's parents, Simsbury natives Eunice Viets and Elisha Griswold, reportedly "brought together two of the most considerable families and estates in the town." Eunice was the fifth of the couple's eight surviving children. Her brother (the couple's second child) was

Alexander Viets Griswold Alexander Viets Griswold (April 22, 1766 – February 15, 1843) was the 5th Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States from 1836 until 1843. He was also the Bishop of the Eastern Diocese, which included all of New Englan ...

, who became the first and only Episcopal bishop of the Eastern States Diocese. His biography, ''A Memoir of the Life of Bishop Griswold'' published in 1844, offers crucial information about Eunice and her family. According to the author, John S. Stone, D.D., Eunice was "a woman of uncommonly extensive reading" and was "zealously instrumental" in the organization and maintenance of her local Episcopal church.Lipman and Winchester, 1950, p. 24. Eunice married Oliver Holcombe of Granby (born 1769) in approximately 1790. Holcombe died young, in his twenties: he drowned when attempting to ford a stream during a trip to Ohio. Traditionally, scholars have assumed that this event left Eunice a young widow, but recent research has revealed that the marriage was an abusive one and that before Holcombe died, the couple had already been divorced. Eunice had two children from this marriage: Hector and Sophia Holcombe (Phelps). In 1797, Eunice married Butler Pinney of Windsor (1766–1850). It appears that the couple initially settled in Windsor but relocated to Simsbury, where Eunice had been born, in about 1844. Eunice and Butler had three children: Norman, Viets Griswold, and Minerva Emeline (Bright). Minerva also was an artist and taught painting at a school in Virginia for several years before her marriage. Eunice died in Simsbury at the age of 79.

Career

All of Pinney's signed and dated watercolors range from 1809 to 1826, which suggests to scholars that she only began painting later in life, some time after her second marriage, and that the majority of her work was executed in Windsor and Simsbury.Lipman and Winchester, 1950, p. 26. Like her contemporaries Willson and

Elizabeth Glaser Elizabeth Glaser (born Elizabeth Meyer; – ) was an American AIDS activist and child advocate married to actor and director Paul Michael Glaser. She contracted HIV very early in the modern AIDS epidemic after receiving an HIV-contaminated blo ...

, she was probably self-taught. Pinny's surviving watercolors include genre subjects, landscapes, portraits, allegories, historical and religious narratives, and memorial scenes, and are characterized by balanced, architectonic compositions, sturdy figures, strong contours and bold colors. Although she was active in the nineteenth century, her protagonists often sport eighteenth-century fashions. As Lipman has noted, "her manner of painting and even the costuming of her figures belong to the 1700s ... It is scarcely stretching the point to consider her an eighteenth-century person who worked in the early nineteenth century." File:Eunice Pinney Memorial 1813.jpg, Eunice Pinney memorial, executed in 1813. Watercolor on paper, 42 x 49 cm,

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...

Many of her compositions, especially those featuring historical or literary narratives, may have been based on popular English engravings. For example, her ''Couple and a Casualty'' of about 1815 in the collection of the

Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (AARFAM) is the United States' first and the world's oldest continually operated museum dedicated to the preservation, collection, and exhibition of American folk art. Located just outside the histori ...

in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, appears to have been based on an English copperplate design on cotton. Pinney also may have mined the patterns of rare English toiles for inspiration.Black and Lipman, 1966, p. 99. Her genre scenes and memorial paintings, however, are wholly original, exhibiting a sophisticated use of color, robust figures and complex compositions. Scholars of American painting such as

Mary Black Mary Black (born 23 May 1955) is an Irish folk singer. She is well known as an interpreter of both traditional folk and modern material which has made her a major recording artist in her native Ireland. Background Mary Black was born into a m ...

and

have compared Pinney's work to that of

Thomas Rowlandson Thomas Rowlandson (; 13 July 175721 April 1827) was an English artist and caricaturist of the Georgian Era, noted for his political satire and social observation. A prolific artist and printmaker, Rowlandson produced both individual social an ...

due to its vigor and sense of theatricality. It is unknown if Pinney trained her daughter Minerva in the technique of watercolor, yet Eunice did send paintings to Minerva when she was teaching in Virginia to provide models for the students.

Collections

Although many of Pinney's surviving works are owned by her descendants, important examples have entered public collections, including the

National Gallery of Art, Washington The National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of char ...

and the

American Folk Art Museum The American Folk Art Museum is an art museum in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, at 2, Lincoln Square, Columbus Avenue at 66th Street. It is the premier institution devoted to the aesthetic appreciation of folk art and creative expressions of ...

in New York City.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pinney, Eunice (Griswold Holcombe) 19th-century American painters American watercolorists Folk artists 1770 births 1849 deaths Painters from Connecticut People from Simsbury, Connecticut People from Windsor, Connecticut American people of English descent 19th-century American women painters Women watercolorists Women outsider artists