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Extraordinary Schoolgirl Art
Two exquisitely stitched and painted silk embroidered pictures hang in Woodlawn’s parlor. Made by sisters Maria and Sarah Croker in the early 1800s, the two pieces of needlework exhibit the very best of New England schoolgirl art.
Maria and Sarah were Mary Cobb Black’s first cousins. They grew up in Taunton, MA and attended Mrs. Susanna Rowson’s Academy in Boston, one of New England’s most prestigious schools for young women.
Produced while at the Academy, these pictures would have been publicly exhibited upon graduation and later hung in their home as evidence of the Croker’s elite status and refined sensibility. The embroideries exist in original condition, with gold frames and reverse-painted black mats and gold lettering.
Susanna Rowson’s Academy (1797-1822) stood out in several ways. The school is recognized as having a “demanding curriculum and commitment to providing young women with a serious and thorough education.” Rownson offered the traditional subjects of music, drawing, literature, and domestic economy, but added to those history, geography, mathematics and science. Basic tuition was about $30 per month with additional fees charged for advanced lessons in music, dancing and the arts. Mr. Croker would have paid extra to include silk embroidery in his daughters’ studies.
While most girls of that time learned basic sewing skills and made common samplers to demonstrate their skills, only the most advanced students produced embroidered silk-on-silk pictures. It would have taken several months to embroider the pictures. When the stitching was completed, someone else was employed to paint in the sky, faces, and other areas that had been left blank. The finish work was often done by same person who then framed the embroidery.
Most girls did not design their own picture to embroider; instead they chose from a portfolio of print sources. Mrs. Rowson’s students appear to have had a broad range of print types beyond traditional biblical, fable, and mourning scenes used at other academies. Sarah’s choice of Wisdom Instructing Youth in the Science of Geography, was taken from a frontispiece to the Lady’s Magazine, vol. 30 (1799). That it was a choice is indicative of Rowson’s progressive instruction. Another embroidery, based on the same print and identically framed, has been located in New Hampshire thus confirming the theory that print sources were used repeatedly at girls’ academies.
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