043

  • A Night Piece

  • 1795
  • Margaret Williamson
  • Embroidered, silk thread, hand-woven linen sampler
  • 40.6 x 41.3 cm., 16 x 16-1/4"
  • Catherine Carter Goebel, Paul A. Anderson Chair in the Arts Purchase, Paul A. Anderson Art History Collection, Augustana College 2000.5

Essay by Deann Thoms, Class of 1990

Margaret Williamson is identified only through her needlework. Her biography remains unknown. However upon examination of her sampler, A Night Piece, much can be deduced about this artist.

Upon initial examination, one might conclude that this 1795 sampler is of British origin because of the soft, pastel colors embroidered on hand-woven ivory linen. Note, however, that a basket of flowers is stitched onto the bottom left of the sampler. This basket motif was typically sewn into samplers by an eastern Massachusetts sampler school (Goebel 70). Margaret Williamson must have therefore attended this New England school and she was not English but American.

After the American Revolution and the emergence of the new federal government, "artists devise[d] a distinctive nationalistic culture around neoclassical principles, looking to the ancient republics of Greece and Rome for inspiration for their new Republic." ("The United States"). Margaret Williamson's sampler, A Night Piece, exemplifies this cultural influence through her choice of poetry which records lines 687-698 of the Translation of Homer's 'The Iliad' by Alexander Pope (1688-1744) (Mack). Although orthodox moral or religious texts were frequent choices in compositions for many samplers of this time, Williamson's selection of A Night Piece conveys not only her identification with contemporary social currents, but also her sophisticated ability to read, understand and illuminate this English version of The Iliad.

Late eighteenth-century samplers are generally characterized by depictions of genre scenes, houses and farm buildings, as well as flocks of animals with shepherds (Bolton and Coe 20). Williamson's sampler incorporates such a typical pastoral scene of a man playing a piped instrument accompanied by a shepherdess, dog and several sheep at the bottom of the poem. All are framed by a border of vines and flowers. Utilizing the embroidery techniques of chain stitches and French knots, the sampler is constructed with top quality linen and silk thread that would infer Williamson's financial ability to secure the finest.

Although we can only surmise that Williamson was an educated, fairly wealthy, American; her needlework remains her legacy. And as in so many cases of female sampler artists, "these small bits of embroidered cloth are often all that remains to testify to the otherwise unrecorded lives of their makers" (Peck).