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Ad Code: 4
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from Auction House Records.
Portrait of a mother, father and child
Artwork images are copyright of the artist or assignee
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This biography from the Archives of AskART:
|  Clarissa Peters Russell was a miniaturist especially known for her delicate depictions of children. She also painted numerous prominent citizens of Boston. She rarely signed her paintings and often had them attributed to her husband or to the itinerant portraitist Joseph Whiting Stock who was working during the same period as she in Massachusetts and shared many of the same stylistic elements.
When Clarissa Russell died from a violent attack of seasickness in 1854, the story was front page news in Boston because she was then a well-known painter, but she has since become nearly obscure.
Much about her early years is a mystery. She was born in North Andover, Massachusetts, to Elizabeth Farrington Davis and John Peters. Her father was a Selectman of the town, and it is likely she attended the Franklin Academy, a girls school. In 1839, she married Moses Russell, (1809-1884), and they had a son, Albert Cuyp Russell (1839-1917), who became a wood engraver.
Her first documented work was a friendship album that is now in the North Andover Historical Society. At some point she became a teacher in Blue Hill. By 1835, she was in Boston painting miniatures and giving private lessons.
She first exhibited in 1841 at the Third Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association in Boston, and she continued exhibiting from that time. From 1840 to 1851, she shared a studio with her husband and was very much a part of the artistic life of Boston.
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