Ruth Henshaw Bascom, also known as Aunt Ruth (December 15, 1772 – February 16, 1848), was an American folk artiste who produced beyond 1,400 portraits. She was the daughter of Colonel William Henshaw and Phebe Swan of Leicester, Massachusetts and a schoolteacher from 1791 to 1801. Bascom married first, at approximately 32 years of age, to Dr. Asa Miles, but he died a year or more after their marriage. She married a second times for not quite 35 years to Reverend Ezekial Lysander Bascom. Bascom didn’t allow birth to kids of her own, but she had a stepson from her first marriage, stepdaughter from her second marriage, and a niece and nephew that she raised. She documented the daily deeds of her excitement in diaries arrival at the age of 17, which included history of the portraits that she made.
While married Bascom fulfilled the role of a minister’s wife, was a teacher, and was lively at the local library and in temperance societies. She made her first portrait in 1801, but she did not begin creating portraits regularly until after 1818. Bascom worked subsequent to a variety of materials, including pastels, pencils, cut paper, and foil. Some of her initial works were layered pieces of paper that represented the head and neck, clothing, and accessories placed over a background. She as a consequence made pastel portraits on one sheet of paper in the latter part of her career.
Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein, author of American Women Artists: From Early Indian Times to the Present, said that Bascom had a “calm strength of characterization combined once a itch feeling for shape, color and texture.”
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