Object Description
fine Regency silkwork picture of The Industrious Cottage Wife after Singleton by Ann Wilson, aged around 15, c.1810
This fine silkwork picture is based on Henry Singleton’s compostion The Industrious Cottage Wife, painted in 1803. The work was extremely popular and was reproduced as a mezzotint and etching by the fine printmaker Charles Turner in the same year, hand coloured versions such as this example in the Fine Art Museums of San Francisco being especially sought-after
https://www.famsf.org/artworks/the-industrious-cottage-wife
It is likely that our piece was reproduced from one of these prints. Sometimes needleworkers worked directly over the top of the print itself, retaining the faces and embroidering the other areas for a mixed collage and embroidered effect.
Our piece retains its original Regency period frame with fine eglomise mount but what makes it particularly special is the label on the back recording the name of the girl who embroidered the picture. According to that label, it was worked by Ann Wilson (1795-1869) who married in to the Burn family when she married the schoolmaster William Burn of Newport Pagnell in Buckinghamshire. Ann was the daughter of William Wilson, recorded in Kent’s Directory for the Year 1794. Cities of London and Westminster, & Borough of Southwark as a ‘weaver and mercer’. It is clear that the talent for working textiles was passed from father to daughter based on the fine quality of the present work.