1 John Wells Stancliff (1813–92), was a marine painter with a studio in Hartford. In early life he had been a telegraph operator and baseball player and trained as a carriage painter and copperplate engraver before studying both oil and watercolor painting. In 1872 and 1873 he exhibited ten works on nautical themes through the Hartford Art Association and the Connecticut School of Design, and served as president of the latter in 1878 (Mattatuck; Groce and Wallace, 598; Yarnall et al., 5:3346).

2 The source of this letter is an item in the Hartford Courant for 17 November 1875, where it appeared with a brief introduction: “Mr. Stancliff having requested of Mr. Clemens a description of the marvelously beautiful illuminations loaned by him to the centennial exhibition, received the following touching reply” (“A Wonderful Work by a Poor Girl,” 2). On 25 October Stancliff began to receive art works and antiques loaned to the Women’s Centennial Association of Hartford for an exhibition that opened on 8 November. The purpose of the show was to raise funds for the construction and furnishing of a women’s pavilion at the International Exhibition of Arts, Manufactures, and Products of the Soil and Mine in Philadelphia, which opened in May 1876 for six months. The women’s pavilion, a huge structure that cost about forty thousand dollars, featured the “products of female industry and ingenuity of every class” from a dozen countries (Annual Cyclopaedia 1876, 262, 272, 281; Hartford Courant: “The Centennial—The Coming Exhibition in This City,” 23 Oct 75, 2; “Centennial Loan Exhibition,” 2 Nov 75, 2; “The Loan Exhibition,” 8 Nov 75, 2, and 15 Nov 75, 2).

3 Stancliff evidently decided not to exhibit the illuminations of this unidentified artist, since the catalog made no mention of them. Three other works that Clemens loaned were shown, however: Beach Scene and Marine, watercolors by William Trost Richards (1833–1905); and Going to Church in Winter, an oil painting by Thomas Lochlan Smith (1835–84) (Yarnall et al., 1:5, 4:2950, 2952, 5:3290; Opitz, 771–72, 871; painting catalog nos. 23, 119, and 122 in Catalog of Works of Art of the Centennial Loan Exhibition [1875], information courtesy of the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford).