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Ammi Phillips

American, 1788 - 1865

BiographyAmmi Phillips was born in Colebrook, Connecticut and began painting portraits of western Massachusetts subjects in about 1811. In 1813 he married Laura Brockway of Schodack, New York, and briefly lived in Troy before settling in Rhinebeck, in Dutchess County. While there, Phillips painted likenesses on both sides of the New York/New England border. These "Border Period'' portraits, executed in pastel shades from 1812 through 1819, feature sitters with gangly arms, glancing sideways. In the 1820s, Phillips experimented with dark and light color contrasts in his portraits of Dutchess, Orange, and Columbia County residents.

After his first wife's death, Phillips remarried, lived for a time in Amenia, New York, and then settled in 1836 in Kent and Sharon, Connecticut. His "Kent Period'' portraits feature darker compositions, often with brilliant patches of bright color, and elegant, graceful poses and facial expressions.

Phillips returned to Amenia in about 1838, lived in Northeast, New York for a decade, and died in Curtisville, New York in 1865. His more than six hundred extant likenesses span an artistic career of nearly sixty years.

Sources include:

Stacy Hollander and Howard P. Fertig, Revisiting Ammi Phillips: Fifty Years of American Portraiture, New York, Museum of American Folk Art, 1994;

Paul S. D'Ambrosio and Charlotte Emans, Folk Art's Many Faces: Portraits in the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, 1987, pp. 125-127,

Beatrix T. Rumford, ed., American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Boston, 1981, pp. 149-150.

Credit from Sotheby's New York

Joseph Piccillo- Joseph Piccillo (born 1941)

(from Joseph Piccillo published by Burchfield Art Center in Buffalo New York 1987.)

Joseph Piccillo was born and educated in Buffalo, New York, where he teaches at the State University he attended.

Born : 1941, Buffalo, New York.

Education : State University College at Buffalo, 1961 B.S., 1964 M.S, both in Art Education.

Occupation : State Universit College at Buffalo Professor of Art Education 1967 to present.

Exhibitions : (one-man)
Krasner Gallery 1977; Galeria Loyse Oppenheim in Geneva 1978; State University College at Buffao 1978; St. Lawrence University 1978; Monique Knowlton Gallery in New York 1980; Betsy Rosenfield Gallery in Chicago 1981; Albright-Knox Art Gallery 1981; Elliot Smith Gallery in St. Louis 1986; Davis-McClain Gallery in Houston 1987.

Exhibitions : (group)
Galerie Isy Bracho in Bussels 1977; Fisher Fine Arts in London 1977; Art 10 '79 in Basle Switzerland 1978; New Dimensions in Drawing at Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT 1981; Animal Imagery at the Institute of Contemporary Art , Virginia Museum 1981; Points of View at Museum of Art at University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK 1982; "The Figurative Mode : Recent Drawings from New York Galleries" at Dowd Fine Arts Center Gallery at SUNY Cortland 1983; Indianapolis Biennial at Indianapolis Museum of Art 1984; Animals at Stamford Museum 1984; Large Figurative Drawings at the Virginia Museum 1985; The Recognizable Image : 16 Contemporary Realists at the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, CT 1985; American Realism - 20th Century Drawings and Water Colors at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 1986; Drawing : the New Tradition at Huntsville Museum of Art 1987.

Awards : Purchase Award at American Academy of Arts and Letters 1968; SUNY Research Fellowship 1969; CAPS fellowship 1972; SUNY Research Fellowship in 1972, 1976, 1979; National Endowment for the Arts 1979.

Holdings : Museum of Modern Art; Metropolitan Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; Madison Art Center; Albright-Knox Art Gallery; Burchfield Art Center; Milwaukee Art Museum; Allentown Art Musuem; Little Rock Art Museum; SUNY at Buffalo and Fredonia; Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.

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