Anna Henrie
Sampler with House and Landscape
1839
Physical Qualities
Linen ground, wool and silk embroidery threads, 30 7/8 x 26 1/2 in. (78.4 x 67.3 cm.)
Credit Line
Gift of the Aaron and Lillie Straus Foundation, Inc.
Object Number
1958.32
In composition, Anna Henrie’s sampler is remarkably similar to those worked nearly 30 years earlier in Burlington County, New Jersey. Those samplers also featured a house with triangular pediments depicted with a flattened sense of perspective, as well as a second house on a hill, animals in the foreground, a front gate, and tall, narrow trees. By 1840, sampler-making had been eclipsed by the rage for Berlin wool work, a technique that involved stitching wool threads through a canvas according to preprinted patterns.
The use of wool threads, the wide floral border, and the flowering bush and bird motifs in Anna Henrie’s sampler show the influence of this popular form of embroidery.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by gift, 1958;Aaron and Lillie Straus Foundation.
Anita Jones, The Baltimore Museum of Art, "Lessons Learned: American Schoolgirl Embroideries," November 23, 2014-May 10, 2015.
Anita Jones, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 'The Accomplished Stitch: American Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection,' 5/11-7/20/97, no. 11.
Anita Jones, The Baltimore Museum of Art, 'The Accomplished Stitch: American Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection,' 5/11-7/20/97, no. 11.
Inscribed: Embroidered in navy blue thread in upper and lower case script at bottom of central image: 'Anna Henrie's work done in AD 1840 Pittsgr[o]ve Salem County West* N* Jer_y'
