The Elusive Kitten: Follow-Up (Deacon Robert Peckham)

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 An unexpected postscript…- - -
It seems like the folk art paintings I research tend to recur again and again with alarming frequency. I'll write to a friend about an artwork I've come across, and hear "I was at that auction" or "I own that painting" or "I saw that portrait last week”! This happens so often that you'd think there's only a few dozen folk art paintings in the whole world. Except for the ones I'm trying to find, like Oliver Ellis Adams, which I expect will turn up 100 years from now in Antarctica.
After posting my article about another mysterious Peckham child in blue — “Girl and Cat" — I shared it with American folk art expert and dealer David Schorsch, who's wisely advised me before on my Peckham research. And, to my astonishment, he replied as follows:
My mother and I owned girl in blue w grey cat before it sold at Sothebys. It was originally found in Massachusetts. We purchased it from Sam Herrup. We were again the buyers the last time it auctioned and sold it to private clients in 2017.  It is pictured in our advertisement in the Magazine Antiques, November 1981, p. 1049. 
I couldn’t believe it! What are the odds? Higher than you’d think, given the Schorschs’ good taste in artwork. David and his assistant Cory Bowie generously sent me a high-res photograph of the girl and her kitten, which I’ve secured permission to share here. It’s a treat to finally see this wonderful work in such close detail. 
(Credit: Private collection, photo courtesy of David A. Schorsch and Eileen M. Smiles, Woodbury, CT; photograph by Richard Goodbody.)
They’re still plotting something.
I also asked David to share that 1981 TMA ad from David & Marjorie Schorsch, Inc, which he graciously provided:
Endearingly, it reads: “A delightful American folk portrait, depicting a little girl holding her gray cat, about 1835. Found in Massachusetts.” 
The Massachusetts origin is certainly a point in favor towards the Peckham-ness. David didn’t specify where this painting received its subsequent Peckham attribution, nor who or when — presumably sometime between 1981 and 1983, when it arrived at the Sotheby’s auction. It’s important to remember that Peckham literature was scarce at the time, compared to the modern abundance of information. So much so, in fact, that in 1978, the good Deacon was still known as the nameless “Raymond Limner.”

(Ironically, this eerie and compelling group portrait feels unlikely as a Peckham attribution, at least without a color photo, though it clearly comes from a very talented hand. The little-known Orlando Bears is a possibility, but hardly a guarantee; I know of no Bears paintings on panel. That said, another Frick Art Reference Library entry mistakes a blindingly obvious Bears for a Peckham. Bears was equally gifted with his ability to capture young people and detailed interiors. More research is forthcoming.
EDIT: David Schorsch weighed in on this "Raymond Limner" picture - he says "Raymond Limner at Hirschl and Adler was later re attributed by them to Peckham, is most like Bears." The odds are certainly in Bears's favor.)
Over the next decades, Peckham scholarship accumulated steadily, but slowly. In 1979, Dale Johnson, a researcher at The Met’s American Art division, published “Delineator of the Human Face Divine” in the American Art Journal. She introduced the talented folk artist on a broader scale with comprehensive and compelling attributions. The next major Peckham publication appeared in 1985 in the January Maine Antiques Digest. Folk collector David Krashes wrote the thoroughly informative “Robert Peckham, Portrait Painter of Massachusetts,” adding a new selection of portraits to the collective knowledge. Here, on the last page, we can find another record of “Girl with Cat,” aka “Young Girl Holding a Kitten,” describing its smashing success at auction ($15,000!):
Krashes also enticingly mentions several more private-collection Peckhams out there in the wild, just waiting to be found. Stay tuned.

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