![Old Sleepy Hollow Church [Alloway Kirk, with Burns' Monument]](/internal/media/dispatcher/12088/preview)
![Old Sleepy Hollow Church [Alloway Kirk, with Burns' Monument]](/internal/media/dispatcher/12088/full)
Thomas Chambers
American, born England, 1808 - 1869Old Sleepy Hollow Church [Alloway Kirk, with Burns' Monument], 1843-1860
On view
Oil on canvas
Dimensions18 3/4 × 24 3/8 in. (47.6 × 61.9 cm)
Framed: 22 × 28 in. (55.9 × 71.1 cm)
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, 1968.18
This painting was given to the FIA in 1968 with the title: Old Sleepy Hollow Church. Most likely the donors Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch bought the work because the church was so near to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, where the Chrysler family mausoleum was located and where the Garbisches would eventually be interred.
Thomas Chambers did not base this painting on the real Sleepy Hollow church (or Dutch Reformed Church) but on a ruined church in Scotland called Alloway Kirk. Additionally, he depicts the monument (on the far left) to the famous poet Robert Burns.
Burns, who grew up near Alloway Kirk, chose it as his location for the spooky tale of Tam o'Shanter. On the way home from the tavern, Tam stumbles upon a witches' sabbath taking place in Alloway. Though Chambers does not depict a specific scene from the poem, it is clear that he wanted to suggest a haunted atmosphere with the use of a full moon and deep, dark shadows.
