American Folk Art

Attributed to an artist working in the Milton Hopkins and Deacon Robert Peckham Circle
Albany New York Family
Oil on canvas, 36 ½ x 36 ½”

Description 

American Folk Art, by its very nature, is a unique fusion of conventional artistic principles with individuality and verve. In the best examples, such as the family group presented here, the personalities leap off the canvas. The artist responsible for this unusual trio worked in a variation of the American Folk style that features crisp, hard lines, strongly delineated shading, and uncompromising likenesses. Painters best known for this technique include Milton W. Hopkins and Deacon Robert Peckham – two renowned portrait painters and noted abolitionists, whose works strongly resemble this artwork.

The painter has captured a great deal of personality in the faces. The mother seems pleased and satisfied, yet calm and detached, holding her child’s hand in a charming variation on the typical group pose. The father seems more skeptical: one can imagine him trying to sit still after a long day, wishing the artist would hurry up and paint! In fact, to maximize the efficiency of the portrait session, the painter might have taken the likenesses of the faces and upper bodies, and filled in the rest later, when the family was otherwise occupied. This may have contributed to the unique, naive interpretation of perspective, with the skewed couch and tilted picture frame, which brings to mind some later experiments in modernism.

There were few painters who used this demanding, technically precise style. Consequently, such paintings are highly sought after by American Folk Art collectors and institutions. A similar family trio by Peckham, Doty Family, still hangs proudly on display in his Massachusetts hometown. Today, although not exactly located, the painting has a provenance linking it to Albany, New York. While the sitters have travelled far from home today, thanks to the decision to paint them
all on one canvas, the family is still together.