Object Status:
Unlocated
Accession Date:
February 26, 1808
Primary Source Reference:
Peale Museum Accessions Book, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, p. 29
Additional Source Text:
Poulson's American Daily Advertiser (Philadelphia), 22 July 1808 reads: "Lachrymatory, a vessel wherein were collected the tears of a deceased person's friends, and preserved along with the ashes and Urn."
Notes:
Herculaneum, near Naples, Italy, was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
Pennsylvania Quaker Joseph Sansom (1767-1826) was the brother and business partner of prosperous Philadelphia merchant and East India trader William Sansom. Self-described as a merchant, Joseph Sansom used his resources to further interests in literature, travel, and the arts. As an amateur artist, he mastered the silhouette profile, producing his “physiognomical sketches” of “remarkable persons” from 1790 to 1792. He recorded portions of his three-year tour abroad in Letters from Europe during a Tour Through Switzerland and Italy, in the Years 1801 and 1802 (Philadelphia, 1805). The following year, he was elected to the American Philosophical Society and, in 1808, contributed to it his mineral collections and Roman relics. Jefferson Papers, Founders Online, National Archives / https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-40-02-0286 ; Charles Coleman Sellers, “Joseph Sansom, Philadelphia Silhouettist,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 88 (1964): 395–401
