"Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt” by John Brewster Jr (1766–1854), Danbury, Conn., 1799. Oil on canvas, 54 by 39½ inches. Lucy Mygatt married Asahel Adams of Trumbull County, Ohio. This portrait descended in their family until 1987, when David and Marjorie Schorsch bought it. It is from a small group of large scale Brewster portraits.
:The world first came to know John Brewster Jr's hushed, ethereal painting of Comfort Starr Mygatt and his young daughter, Lucy, when Sotheby's auctioned the late Eighteenth Century portrait in 1988 for $852,500, then a record for American folk art.
The painting was consigned by New York dealers David A. Schorsch and his mother, Marjorie, who just a year earlier uncovered the canvas, one of the deaf-mute artist's most important commissions, in Ohio, still with descendants. The Schorsches had long handled the best American folk art, but "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" was the most significant discovery of their career.
Another leading dealer, G.W. Samaha, bought the picture and in 1991 lent it to the traveling exhibition, "Ralph Earl: The Face of The New Republic." Early in 2006, "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" resurfaced in the New York State Historical Association's traveling exhibition "The World of John Brewster Jr, 1766–1854." Jane and Gerald Katcher were listed as the painting's new owners.
For all the collectors who enjoy the fraternity of the marketplace, there are others who pursue their passions privately. Beginning in the 1980s, Jane Frank Katcher, a pediatric radiologist and mother of three from Coconut Grove, Fla., quietly put together one of the best collections of American folk art in the country.
Katcher broke her silence this fall with the publication of Expressions of Innocence and Eloquence: Selections From The Jane Katcher Collection of Americana. Published by Marquand Books in Seattle in association with Yale University Press, the book features "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" on its cover.
Slide-lid box, southeastern Pennsylvania, probably Lancaster County, circa 1780–1810. White pine, original painted decoration; 6½ by 12¼ by 9½ inches. This box was first brought to public attention in 1925 when Esther Stevens Fraser published it in The Magazine Antiques. It was recorded in the Index of American Design in the 1930s and illustrated in The Flowering of American Folk Art in 1974. Freeman's in Philadelphia auctioned it in November 2005 as part of the estate of Esther H. Ludwig.
Two pieces from the collection, a J.L. Mott Goddess of Liberty weathervane and a Baltimore album quilt, the cover lot of the 1987 Jill and Austin Fine sale at Sotheby's, have already been promised to Yale University Art Gallery, prompting speculation that additional pieces from the Katcher collection may ultimately go to the New Haven, Conn., institution, known for American painting, furniture and silver, but not for folk art. In 2004, the couple established the Jane and Gerald Katcher Foundation for Education at the gallery.
"Jane has a very strong visual sense and a remarkable ability to put objects together in aesthetically pleasing and powerful ways," says Patricia E. Kane, the Friends of American Arts Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale.
From February 13 to August 26, Yale is presenting "Made For Love: Selections From The Jane Katcher Collection of Americana." "Comfort Starr Mygatt and Lucy Mygatt" will be the centerpiece of the display, which features tokens of affection such as a miniature heart-shaped box of 1847, a variety of handmade paper valentines, a puzzle purse and Sarah Sawyer's friendship album.
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