Frank Hector Tompkins (American, 1847-1922)
The Embankment, Parker Hill, Boston
signed and dated 'F.H. Tompkins/1910' (lower left), titled on a label from Vose Galleries of Boston (affixed to the frame backing)
oil on canvas
26 x 32 in.
framed 33 3/4 x 39 1/4 x 2 1/2 in.
Footnotes:
Provenance
Frank Hector Tompkins Estate Sale, Leonard & Co., Boston, May 1923.
Mrs. Julia B. Porter, Roxbury, Massachusetts.
By descent through the Porter family.
Private collection, Massachusetts, 2007.
Barridoff Auctions, South Portland, Maine, Summer 2021 International Fine Art Sale, August 14, Lot 128.
Private Collection, New York.

Exhibited
Boston, Massachusetts, Boston Art Club, Frank Hector Tompkins Retrospective Exhibition, November 4-26, 1921, no. 25, as Parker Hill.
Cleveland, Ohio, Cleveland School of Art (year unknown).

N.B.
After studying at the Cincinnati Academy of Design, the Art Students League in New York, and the Royal Academy in Munich, Frank Hector Tompkins opened a studio in Boston in 1887 and joined the Boston Art Club. He painted portraits of fellow artists including John J. Enneking along with other members of the arts and intellectual community. He also worked on landscapes of the city's waterfront, parks, and suburbs, like the example presented here which depicts a group of children taking in the city skyline from Parker Hill in the Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. At the center of the figural group stands Julia Moriarty, alongside her younger brother and sister. Tompkins and Moriarty remained friends and the latter (later Julia Porter through marriage), purchased this painting, and any others available for which she posed, at the artist's estate sale in 1922.

The canvas is strip lined along the edges. There is very gentle rippling to the canvas. Fine craquelure lies in some areas of impasto. Under uv examination, scattered retouch is evident in the sky, as well as small specks in the figures, several spots in the path, and small areas near lower right and near the dog.