Charming and rare suite of folk art paintings created by a talented Monmouth County female artist, rendered on paper, seashells, and a wooden plate.

Each work in the collection depicts the Old Tennent Church and Parsonage at a few different points in its history (Swift Bowne used various woodcuts and engravings as source material for her work). The Old Tennent Church is located in Manalapan, New Jersey. The congregation, a member of the Presbyterian Church USA, was founded in 1692 and played a prominent role in the founding of Presbyterianism in America. The current edifice was completed in 1751–1753 and was named in memory of pastors John Tennent and his brother William Tennent. The Old Tennent Cemetery is located on the same property. The church itself is a Revolutionary War site, having been used as a hospital for wounded soldiers during the battle of Monmouth.

Carrie Augusta Bowne Swift (1844 - 1924) was a talented local artist and lifelong Freehold resident. She studied at the Freehold Young Ladies Seminary in the late 1850s. As an artist, she enjoyed depicting local structures, many of which were associated with the Battle of Monmouth and rendered her work on unconventional media such as tin, wood, and seashells from native mollusks, as well as the occasional paper or canvas. She often gifted her work to friends, relatives, and neighbors, and sometimes sold them as souvenirs or showcased them regionally. An 1885 article from the Monmouth Democrat, correcting an error that credited her work to another, notes that “Mrs. Carrie A. Swift of Freehold, exhibited at our late county fair a case of shells decorated with paintings in oil of scenery at Freehold, Asbury Park, and other places in the county of interest, upon which she bestowed a good deal of labor and artistic skill...Mrs. Swift has acquired quite a reputation for painting on shells, and her work is widely sought for, taxing her strength to the utmost to fill the orders for it.”

While Swift was quite popular in her time, her work is rather scarce (likely due in part to the fragility of her “canvases” of choice). Examples of her paintings are held at the Monmouth County Museum and a few other institutions, but we have been able to trace no recent records of her work coming to market or public auction.

Overall, a lovely collection from a notable artist whose work is worthy of greater recognition and further scholarship.