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An album of twelve creations of Millard's including 6 small oil paintings of pastoral animals, & village scenes (one initialed), one signed pencil sketch (a large house on a road/railroad siding & silo) most likely California, four watercolors of leaves and a jug. The lithograph is of a small bunch of grapes, perhaps a study for her work on the "Grapes and Grape Vines of California". All are meticulously detailed and very lovely, the oils painted on thick paper and glued onto the existing pages of the album. Hannah Millard [1827 - 1900] was a New York born American artist, affiliated with the pre-Raphaelite artist movement. Followers of Ruskin paid close attention to the natural world, and these small gems are a tribute to his legacy. Millard was an art teacher at the San Jose Institute in 1874 and was commissioned by the State Vinicultural Society to illustrate the varieties of grapes grown in California in 1875. She painted ten highly detailed oils and watercolors of grapes which were used to illustrate the book, Grapes and Grape Vines of California (1877). [Artists in California 1786-1940]. In 2022, a copy of this extremely rare book realized almost $480,000 at auction. The plates are oleographs, a labor-intensive type of chromolithograph designed to imitate oil painting on canvas. Each color requires a separate stone, resulting in up to 28 impressions just to print a single plate-a total of 250,000 impressions for the full run of the book. Her "watercolor illustrations of ten grape varieties, painted in the vineyards at vintage time, are contributions to the science of viticulture. They are the first thus far in this country to picture in color both sides of the leaves of grapes, with the clusters and the tendrils on the canes. These are indispensable in identifying individual grape varieties among the more than ten thousand named throughout the world" (Adams). The paintings range in size from (2) 4 1/4 x 2", (10) 5 3/4 x 4 1/4" to 7 7/8 X 5 5/8". Most paintings have rounded top borders and are glued onto the scrapbook pages. The book is stamped in gilt on the front cover "H. Millard". 6 Oil paintings 1. Steer in a field, its coloring brown and white 2. Two sheep in a field, near a pond, an old tree behind, along with extremely delicate flowers. Initialed in the bottom left. 3. A graveyard with two stones visible on a hillside overlooking a town with the dominant bell tower of the church in the center. (California?) 4. A meadow scene of two pastures split by a rock wall, a man walking away from the viewer towards the cows in the distance, foreground of wildflowers. 5. A vista (California?) taken from a hilltop, looking towards a river with mountains in the mid and distance field. 6. A high road leading away, mountains in the distance, a small religious way house on the side of the road, a larger stone building on the right, a woman in a peasant outfit with red skirt in the foreground. (Italy?) Watercolors 1. A brown leaf with shadow, exquisitely executed 2. Five red leaves, the underside revealed, highlighted with gum Arabic. 3. Seven green & brown leaves, holly like, the underside revealed, highlighted with gum Arabic. 4. A jug with applied design of oak leaves and acorns, highlighted with white. Pencil sketch 1. A double story building with a verandah and possibly a silo next door, a barn behind. B&w, signed bottom left "H. Millard" Lithograph 1. A small bunch of grapes, exquisitely executed with dark shadow. With a letter from a dealer for provenance dated July 1989. The album has a small booksellers ticket inside the front cover from Francis & Loutrel Stationers, Steam Job Printers & Book Binders in New York City. They were established in 1844, and a resource at Stanford* dates this album to 1858, stating "Francis & Loutrel have removed from their old stand to the new store, no. 45 Maiden Lane, (near Nassau St.)." which is the address on this ticket. 9 x 13 1/4", brown leather, gilt decoration on spine with "Scrap Book.
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