Susanna Paine

Susanna Paine, also known as Susannah and Susan was the second child of James Paine (b. 1764–65) and Mary Chaffee Paine (1767–1849). Her father was a mariner. When she was a young girl, he was lost at sea. |group="nb" Paine learned how to paint with watercolor at the academy and graduated with the highest honors; she was sufficiently trained "to teach any of the common branches of education."

Reluctantly, and at her mother's insistence, she married James Phillips on November 4, 1819. Her husband—a gambler—was abusive, tyrannical and cruel. According to Paine, she left her husband after "one year and two months of cruel bondage".

Artist Catherine R. Williams, , oil on wood, Rhode Island Historical Society

Paine was "a woman of stalwart proportions, weighing over 200 pounds, and was a very original character..." She was also described as an idealist. but found it was safe to stay in boarding houses, secured through "several letters of introduction" from trusted people.

Throughout her career, Paine generally made oil paintings on 1/2 inch wood panels of which the sides and back were washed in red, gray-green, or green-blue. The subjects of the paintings were often portrayed in a confident manner in half-length poses. Their accessories, hair, and clothing were often "elaborately detailed". The placement of hands, tables, and other objects could be awkward. She had a tendency to paint the sitters with long hands, light flesh tones, doelike eyes and round faces. Paine was known to take liberties in the portrayal of her subjects; she once painted a gray-eyed man's portrait with black eyes because she thought they were more attractive.

Maine She traveled alone for the first time in 1826 to Portland, Maine, and placed a business advertisement in the December 12 edition of the Portland Advertiser.

Paine worked as an artist in Maine until about 1831.

Massachusetts She received formal art training at the Boston Athenæum around 1832 and spent the following summer in Cape Ann. She was in the village of Annisquam on Cape Ann by 1834, when she painted portraits of families.

She raised a girl, who she called her adopted daughter, from 12 to 15 years of age. During that time Paine taught her to paint and they lived for a few months in Fall River, Massachusetts. During a visit to her mother and stepfather's farm, she found that her younger half-brother, Nathaniel, had secured the deed to the farm and lived in the main house; her parents lived in "a sort of out-house". Months later, after her half-brother sold the farm, Paine found them "looking sad and dejected" with Nathaniel in South Killingly, Connecticut, and made arrangements for her mother and step-father to live in an apartment.

Rhode Island In 1830, Paine painted the portrait of author, Catharine R. Williams, who wrote poetry, Religion at Home, and the Lives of William Barton and Stephen Olney. The portrait was given to the Rhode Island Historical Society in 1885 from a group of members of the society, including Henry J. Steere. From about 1836, she had a residence in Providence, Rhode Island and kept her parents in "comfortable support".

Later years Paine traveled through Maine, where she had difficulty establishing herself for want of connections that she had relied upon in the past, so she returned to Providence and for the first time established herself in a highly respectable commercial building with, aside from herself, only male occupants. She struggled professionally and, because of the loss of her mother, she suffered personally. The career that she relied upon kept her forever traveling, which had made it difficult to establish long-standing relationships. Her relationship with her mother was the only close one of her life.

She published her autobiography, Roses and Thorns, or Recollections of an Artist in 1854. Six years later she published Wait and See, a Victorian novel. She died in Providence, Rhode Island on November 10, 1862.

A file containing papers, photographs, exhibition catalogs and other archival material is held at the Brooklyn Museum Libraries & Archives and the Frick Art Reference Library of the Frick Collection.

Collections Cape Ann Museum, Gloucester, Massachusetts Portland Museum of Art, Maine

Works Sally Ellery Ryerson Merchant, oil on canvas, , Cape Ann Historical Association Gideon Lane, III, oil on wood, 1833, Cape Ann Historical Association