Mrs. Reuben Allerton (Lois Atherton)

<p>Ammi Phillips was a self-taught, itinerant portrait painter and plied his trade in western Connecticut, western Massachusetts, and New York. He first appeared as a professional portrait painter in a July 29, 1809, advertisement placed in the <em>Berkshire Reporter</em> (Pittsfield, Massachusetts), in which he promised to paint likenesses and profiles over the following weeks in his room at Clarke's Tavern.</p> <p>A doctor in Pine Plains, New York, <a href="https://www.artic.edu/artworks/55706/cornelius-allerton">Cornelius Allerton</a> was forty-two years old when Phillips painted him (1946.394). In an accompanying portrait of his widowed mother, the severe, wrinkled Mrs. Allerton wears a stiff bonnet, denoting her age. Both are shown with identifying symbols associated with their work, with Mrs. Allerton holding the <em>Gospel Herald</em>, an evangelical newspaper published in New York City between 1820 and 1827. In contrast, Cornelius holds a volume of <em>Parr's Medical Dictionary</em> on his lap, and his saddled horse appears in the distant background, ready to go at a moment's notice. As a pair—a man of science, out in the world; and a plain woman of religion—they represent the separate spheres of men and women in the nineteenth century.</p>