Meet the Gages (Deacon Robert Peckham)

From a typo to a temporary loss of identity.

A large part of my folk art research method involves scrolling through thousands of records of American School sales, looking at countless pictures to match patterns and spot similarities. There’s a method to the madness, even though most of the time, it is just madness. But when something leaps out, it makes it all worthwhile. One example of the illogical soundness of the brute-force search is Frances and Humphrey Cousens — Peckham’s last two paintings, as listed in Deborah Chotner's Hobby Horse catalog (p. 43), aka the Peckham bible. 

Frances and Humphrey are Peckham’s final pieces in Hobby Horse, chronologically, but they may not be the very last of all — his wonderful portrait of his son Samuel Henry Peckham as a young man is featured in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston collection, and dates to 1855-60. But all of his later works are crucial for a complete study, representing some of the artist’s most polished and refined output. As I’ve compiled my Peckham catalog over the past months, I’ve been eager to get hold of photographs to fill out the collection. Frustratingly, though, no images of Frances and Humphrey are publicly available, and “private collection” could be anybody in the whole state of Maine. Good luck with that.

Luckily, an online search for “Frances Gage Cousens” was not for naught. It turned up this listing for the Gage Family Papers, courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society: 

Fascinatingly, the Gage Family Papers are hugely relevant to another piece of Peckham lore: the four portraits of his beloved children. In the mid-1910s, Peckham’s youngest daughter, Mary Mahalath Peckham (daughter of his second wife Mahalath Griggs), sold her belongings, including four family portraits of Peckham’s children, to pay for her healthcare at the end of her life.

Unfortunately, Mary was not sufficiently paid by her neighbor, and sought out legal help from Mr. Thomas Gage, who fortunately purchased the portraits, and compensated Mary accordingly. It's a sad and bittersweet story, and a reminder that unpleasant neighbors are a tale as old as time.

As it turns out, there’s a meaningful connection between Frances and Thomas Gage. This research guide has the key: Frances was Thomas’s aunt. He probably saw her portrait that Deacon Peckham painted. This might explain Thomas’s fondness for the works of Peckham, and his respect and appreciation for Mary and her father, as well as the care with which the Gage family looked after those four child portraits.

In one of her letters, Mary describes the contents of the paintings: her sister Ruth, her brother George, her brother Samuel Henry with a writing slate, and herself as a little girl, seated in a chair holding a baby. (All four portraits remained in the Gage family and passed down by descent until they were sadly split up and sold in 2022.)

(Portrait of a Boy with Ruffled Collar, aka George Peckham; Portrait of Ruth; Portrait of a Boy with a Slate, aka Samuel Henry; Portrait of Two Children, aka Mary M. Peckham and a baby.)

"...The portrait of the boy with the slate was my half brother Henry Peckham. He was born June 2, 1833 and died in Andersonville prison in Sept 1864. The little girl with the short hair was my sister Ruth. She was born Oct. 28 1826. Died Dec 1913. The portrait was painted when she was five or six years old. The companion piece was my brother George. He was born Oct. 2. 1827. Died Aug 1884. Was about three years old when it was painted. The other little girl was myself. I was born Feb. 14 1844. Was three years old when I was painted. The portrait of the two children was mine."

All four of those paintings feature prominently in my Peckham catalog, alongside dozens of others. But, as I worked on matching up the Hobby Horse listings with images of the paintings, I couldn’t find anything to do with Frances or Humphrey. That is, until I was scrolling “American School 19th century” listings (the aforementioned brute-force search), and spotted these two austere and serious faces…

They looked exactly like Peckhams at a glance, and Occam’s Razor kicked in from there. The names were recognizable: “Lady Francis Gage” and “Humphrey Cousins” — suspiciously close to Frances Gage Cousens and Humphrey Cousens. They’re listed as “by descent to the consignor,” which really makes me wonder how they got the names wrong.

After I found Frances and Humphrey, it was a simple matter to confirm them as the Peckhams with nearly-identical names (the auction listing mentioned their Maine origin, which sealed the deal). Not only do the names match, but the style, too: this pair can be meaningfully compared to the portraits of Maria Winship Cowee and William Williams Cowee (c. 1836) and Abigail and Almond Derby (c. 1830).

Amusingly, the auction for Abigail and Almond lists the artist as “Robert Deacon Peckham.” It was his title, not his middle name! But, as this article makes abundantly clear, name mix-ups are all too frequent. Alarmingly often, they can lead to a total loss of the artist’s identity. It’s probably a stroke of luck that any of these pictures still say “Peckham” at all.

(Maria and William Cowee, on the left; Abigail and Almond Derby, on the right. See the Fenimore Museum links above for more information on the Cowees. The Derbys are now in a private collection.)

As you can see, Peckham’s color palette, posing methods, and shading and lighting techniques are incredibly consistent. There’s no doubt in my mind that these pieces would be identifiable as Peckham’s work, with or without a name attached. But it’s wonderful to be able to pin them down so closely, matching them to their exact identities. Since they already had partial names, I wouldn’t count this one as a complete rediscovery like Girl and Cat, but it’s always good to have more Peckhams in the world. I just wish I actually knew where they went!