Hannah Cohoon

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Tree of Light or Blazing Tree , 1845

Hannah Cohoon (born February 1, 1788 in Williamstown , Massachusetts , † January 7, 1864 in Hancock , Massachusetts) was an American painter of the Shaker movement.

Life

Hannah Cohoon, née Harrison, grew up in a farming family with her two older sisters, Lois and Polly. After the early death of the father Noah B. Harrison (1759–1789), the mother Huldah Bacon Harrison (1763–1809) raised the children alone.

Hannah married young, but looked after their children at an early age. Nothing is known about her husband's whereabouts. In March 1817 she settled with her three-year-old daughter Mariah and five-year-old son Harrison in the neighboring village of Hancock, a Shaker village founded in 1790. There she joined the local Shaker sect. She started painting late in life. Hannah Cohoon did not see herself as a painter, as she only painted her divine visions on "higher orders".

Sister Hannah , as she was called in the Shaker Congregation, died in 1864 in Hancock, which she had never left since moving here, and was buried in the local cemetery.

plant

  • A Bower of Mulberry Trees , 1854

  • Tree of Life , 1854

Hannah Cohoon is considered the most outstanding artist in the Shaker community. Like other members of the Shaker, mostly women and young girls, Cohoon recorded their visions, which were considered to be sent by God, in pictures and pieces of music called gifts . The richness of detail in her pictures and the concentration on one motif set her apart from the works of other Shakers.

A Little Basket Full of Beautiful Apples , 1856

One of her earliest pictures, Tree of Light or Blazing Tree (ink, pencil and gouache on paper) is dated October 9, 1845 and shows the "Tree of Life", a religious symbol of the Shakers for life and eternal growth. She later took up the tree motif repeatedly. Her last picture was taken on June 29, 1856 from a vision of a Shaker woman who hands her a basket of fresh apples.

Her works are in the collection of the Hancock Shaker Village in Pittsfield , which has served as a museum since 1960. Her paintings survived as part of a bundle of 200 works by Shakers of Hancock and Lebanon, NY.

In the 1930s, the Tree of Life , dated 1854, was rediscovered. The picture has been exhibited twice at the Whitney Museum of American Art ; it appeared on the cover of magazines, books and on a postcard for the UNICEF children's charity . In the first large museum exhibition Shaker Handicrafts in 1935 at the Whitney Museum of American Art with objects and drawings by the Shaker, the only four known paintings by Hannah Cohoon were shown. Another watercolor Cohoons was rediscovered in 1996, resembling one of her first paintings from 1845. In January 1997, Sotheby’s sold it to the American Folk Art Museum in New York for $ 299,500 .

literature

Gottfried Sello: painters from five centuries . Ellert and Richter Verlag, Hamburg 1988, ISBN 3-89234-077-3 , pp. 70-71.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stephen J. Paterwic: Historical Dictionary of the Shakers, pp. 45-46 . Scarecrow Press, 2008 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  2. ^ A b c New England Historical Society: Flashback Photo: Hannah Cohoon and The Tree of Life . Retrieved April 3, 2016
  3. ^ Hannah Cohoon & Her Song. In: amaranthpublishing.com. Retrieved November 22, 2015 .
  4. ↑ The New Yorker: Shining Tree of Life , February 13, 2006. Retrieved April 3, 2016
  5. ↑ American Folk Art Museum: Gift Drawing: The Tree of Light or Blazing Tree ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved April 3, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / collection.folkartmuseum.org
  6. ↑ a b c Rita Reif: A Shaker Rarity Causes a Stir . In: The New York Times . January 12, 1997, ISSN  0362-4331 ( nytimes.com ).
  7. ↑ Rosemary McKittrick: Shaker Surprise: Drawings Hidden in Old Frame Yield Rare Folk Art Find ( Memento of the original from March 23, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Retrieved April 3, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.liveauctiontalk.com
personal data
SURNAME Cohoon, Hannah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Harrison, Hannah (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American painter of the Shaker movement
DATE OF BIRTH February 1, 1788
PLACE OF BIRTH Williamstown , Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 1864
Place of death Hancock , Massachusetts