Asa Ames


Asa Ames was an American artist who is today considered one of the most significant American folk art sculptors of the 19th century. Within his brief career, which spanned from 1847 to his death in 1851, Ames created a series of at least nineteen unique, three-dimensional portraits of family members, neighbors, friends and on at least one occasion, national political figures. Ames's work received acclaim during his own lifetime, culminating in the presentation of a silver medal for his work at the New York State Fair in 1848. His carvings - which primarily depict children and young adults - are held in the collections of a number of prominent American art institutions, including the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, American Folk Art Museum, Boulder History Museum, Huntington Museum of Art, New York State Historical Association and Wadsworth Atheneum.

Life

Asa Ames was born on December 28, 1823, in Evans, Erie County, New York, some twenty miles south of Buffalo. His parents, John Ames and Susan Gates Ames, had recently moved there from Worcester County, Massachusetts, probably in anticipation of the greater economic opportunity to come with the opening of the Erie Canal, which followed in 1825. After the death of John Ames in 1830, when Asa was seven, his mother remarried in 1842, to Elias Babcock, but was to be widowed a second time two years later. Asa was the fourth of five children, with his siblings and their families playing an important part in his career; at least four of Ames's known oeuvre of nineteen works portray family members. Others portray neighbors in Evans, some of whom Ames lived with for a time. His work as a sculptor is therefore deeply rooted in his kinship network and local community, which was in tension with other aspects of his career which point to the rising tide of modernity, notably his interest in phrenology.
Ames died on August 4, 1851, possibly of tuberculosis, with his tombstone giving his final age as "27 years, 7 months, and 7 days." His name would not be recovered by art historians until 1977, when Jack T. Ericson discovered it in the 1850 federal census for Evans, New York; publication followed five years later in 1982, establishing the basis for subsequent scholarship. Since then Asa Ames has assumed an eminent place in the history of American art as a leading folk sculptor of the 19th century.
Ames's short life is sparely documented. The dates of his birth and death are known by his tombstone, other details in the federal census of 1850, with the gaps in the record skillfully reconstructed by art historians on the basis of nineteen works and the web of connections they have revealed. Additionally, descendants of Asa Ames have proved helpful to historians by making accessible family records, which show that Ames was married to a woman named Emma Hurd of the Marvin household, where Ames was a resident at the time of the 1850 census shortly before his death. Even more significantly, the Ames family has helped identify subjects of the sculptors' portraits.

"Sculpturing"

Despite the fact that little is known about the Ames's artistic formation, his skill "suggests that he served an apprenticeship" during his youth, "although it is not clear in what profession." Ames's medium of wood distinguished him from his contemporaries. In the nineteenth century, painting was understood as the common medium for portraiture. In contrast, woodcarving was employed in the more humble production of advertising figures and ship carving. Ames's distinctiveness lies in his ability to construct such emotionally commanding portraiture out of this vernacular medium.
Scholars have debated whether Ames’ work should be understood as a direct descendant of the ship carving genre, or rather, as part of the classical tradition of sculpture. Typical ship carving of figureheads have a forward thrust, which is absent from Ames’ work. Additionally, with the exception of one piece, Ames's works have “no flowing neoclassical draperies” – another characteristic of the ship carving tradition. To some extent, Ames's self-described occupation of “sculpturing” in the United States census of 1850 offers a glimpse into the artist's self-perception. Despite the fact that “sculpturing” was usually reserved to describe works of stone or metal, Ames employed it freely in the census. He professed his work to be one of artistic merit.

Portraits

Ames dedicated most of his career to carving likenesses of his relatives and friends. His portraits reveal an attentive eye to the particular – to the individual characteristics of each of his subjects, which he portrayed in a straightforward fashion. Characteristic of Ames’ portraits are “broad foreheads and uncompromising eyes,” which Ames “carved deeply under heavy brows, the eyelashes painted as a series of dots.”
In 1847 Ames carved frontal busts of his sister's three children: Millard F., Maria, and Adelaide. Afterwards, while living with Dr. Thomas Armstrong later that year, he set out to carve a likeness of Dr. Thomas Armstrong’ daughter – Amanda Clayanna. What resulted is a standing figure of the young girl, “leaning against a draped tablet in slight contrapposto.”
From 1847 to 1851, Ames carved three portraits of adults – two men and one woman. Scholars have recently suggested that this series of portraits may represent portraits of Ames’ two brothers and sister.
In 1849 Ames crafted two carvings of children – a full-figured statue of a young girl and a Naked Child. The young girl has been identified as Susan Ames, the daughter of Ames's brother, Henry. Naked Child probably represents a likeness of the son of Dr. Harvey B. Marvin – LaRay Marvin. At the time this sculpture was carved, Ames was living with the family; young LaRay was seven months old. The work Seated Female Figure with Lamb and Cup was the last carving to be dated by Ames in April 1850 - a little more than a year before his death. Widely understood as a memorial to two young sisters, Sarah Reliance and Ann Augusta Ayer, Ames inscribed in wood their death from cholera in 1849, at the ages of three and one, respectively.

Phrenological Head

Ames's 1850 phreonological bust, currently in the American Folk Art Museum's collection, is perhaps the artist's most unusual work. Since its introduction at the Brooklyn Museum's 1948 exhibition “Popular Art in America,” the bust has testified both to the profound impact of phrenology on the 19th-century American psyche and to Ames's increasingly sophisticated craft.
At the height of its influence, phrenology had become a visible practice of both urban and rural landscapes. Individual operators, inspired by the commercial success of the Fowler brothers, offered "phrenological observations" to the public. This increase in interest brought about the distribution of phrenological tools; plaster casts, measuring devices, charts, and to some extent, modeled phrenological heads, became increasingly common.
While it is not known why exactly Ames's carved this phrenological study, some have suggested that Dr. Marvin, the physician that Ames was living with at the time, fostered his interest in "alternative" medicine. Marvin, who explored remedies such as hydrotherapy and magnet therapy, perhaps inspired Ames's study of phrenology. Additionally, given the fact that Ames soon fell ill to tuberculosis, he might have been seeking treatment from Dr. Marvin.

Modern Exhibitions

Ames's sculptures made their debut at the Newark Museum's 1931 exhibition "American Folk Sculptures: The Work of Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Craftsmen." However, the exhibit incorrectly identified their creator to be Alexander Ames, not Asa Ames.
Asa Ames finally earned his own solo exhibition in 2008. From April to September, The American Folk Art Museum launched the show The exhibition featured eight of his works, as well as a newly discovered daguerreotype of the artist.

Daguerreotype

The daguerreotype found in the collection of the Ames family is singularly exceptional in that it shows the sculptor surrounded by several of his creations while working on another. Asa Ames is seated at the left, working on a new bust located between his legs while behind him at center is the top of a viola and four additional sculptural works on display. They include his sculpture of a naked child, his study of a hand holding a book and two portrait busts, one depicting a young boy and the other a young girl. In the lower right foreground is the mysterious image of another young man, perhaps a member of the Ames family.
The purpose of staging such an elaborate image is open to interpretation. However, it seems likely that it was created at some point not long after Ames received his silver medal in 1848 as a promotional image or device. Due to its small size, Fleming believes it may have been prominently displayed to potential clients when Ames traveled to their homes to propose creating a sculpture for them as a way to show the quality and types of work he was capable of creating. This may be especially true as unlike many of his contemporaries, Ames was not known to have maintained a fixed studio space and is often reported as residing with his clients during the creation of their commissions.

List of Known Works

Currently, there are nineteen works known to have been made by Asa Ames during his very short career. While most examples are held in public and private collections, the location of several works remain unknown at present. Of these, nearly all were exhibited at some point either during the artist's lifetime or during the early part of the 20th century. Only one work is known to have been destroyed since its creation.