Horse Trade Scene, Cornish Maine (1853)

Oil on canvas, 20 x 24 inches, signed and dated lower left. Signed, dated, and titled verso. * When Bullard died at the age of thirty-seven, he had achieved widespread fame. His three- thousand-foot long Panorama of New York City had traveled throughout North America for seventeen years, and was viewed by an estimated “million persons.” The work was a social and cultural event wherever it was shown. In Horse Trade Scene, which was executed shortly before the artist’s untimely death, the panorama is mentioned on the chalkboard inside the door of the Eagle Hotel. Bullard exhibited works at the National Academy from 1842-1853, and at the American Art Union. His works can be found in the collections of Yale University, Smith College, the Shelburne Museum, the Parrish Art Museum, and Harvard University. Bullard painted more than nine-hundred works, most of them portraits. Less than twenty of these are known to have survived.