The Chapbook Children (Jonas Welch Holman, Lyman Parks, and Deacon Robert Peckham)
This story starts with an entirely different painting, by an entirely different artist. It arrives at the right answer despite itself.
- - -PART I. THE MIX-UP- - -
I first encountered this charming double portrait on an online auction site, allegedly sold as the work of Deacon Robert Peckham. It’s a lovely folk depiction of children in an interior, which, in all fairness, was Peckham’s specialty. As is typical for the style and era, they’re bright, alert, and look like they know too much. Notably, the props include a chapbook (a small printed pamphlet book for children) and a rose.
Here’s a close-up — as a 2012 sale, the image quality is a bit lacking but it will have to do. Let’s refer to it as “Harp and Violin,” in light of that unusual book.
It’s a wonderful piece. If only Peckham had painted it!
I don’t know where the “Peckham” misattribution came from, nor precisely why. And for months, the name of the real artist eluded me. All I knew, back then, was that this was no Peckham — an unfortunate hindrance to my research, and a precautionary tale about trusting what you read in American folk art auctions.
Let’s turn to my field guide to Peckham children’s faces. At a glance, you can see why he was chosen as the supposed artist of “Harp and Violin.” There are differences between the Peckham group and the other two children, but they’re subtle, subjective, and very challenging to articulate. Nonetheless, for the Peckhams, I’ll point out the narrower spacing between the eyes; the noticeably different shape of the “default” mouth; the stronger shadow on the near side of the nose; the different approach to hair shine; and so on, and so forth. In order to learn to tell these folk art styles apart, it requires the sheer time and effort of looking at an awful lot of 1800s kids, and that’s not for everybody.
Regrettably, the mislabeling of “Harp and Violin” as a Peckham work interfered with my study of another marvelous folk double portrait, “Portrait of Two Girls.” I suspected at the time, and still do, that this wonderfully unique picture may be an early Peckham painting. Compared to the group above, there’s a meaningful likeness in the style of the children, despite the flatter, simpler rendering in “Two Girls” — especially the alert gazes, distinctively shaped mouths, and full lower faces. The depiction of racial equality matches Peckham’s fervent abolitionist beliefs, and the presence of the chapbook tracks closely with his support for education. Peckham was instrumental in founding the local co-educational Westminster Academy, just one of many good deeds. But that’s another story for another day.
Extensive research by the previous owner of “Two Girls,” the Philip Mould Gallery, adds historical context to the girls’ chapbook depicting the “Cinderella” fairytale:
Within the canon of Western portraiture, books were common accessories used in portraits to indicate the erudition of the sitter, and in this instance emblematic of a highly significant period in the expansion of literacy and printing in North America. The book we see here is a chapbook, which was an unbound paper pamphlet sold by travelling chapmen, who were sometimes referred to as ‘travelling stationers’.[2] Chapbooks were widely read after the American Revolution as presses rapidly sprang up in seaports and inland towns. From 1800 to 1821 New England experienced ‘a veritable flood’[3] of children’s books, many of which were reprints from the previous decades, often of the exceedingly popular English editions.
During my email outreach to the gallery to discuss the possible Peckham authorship of “Two Girls,” I had mentioned “Harp and Violin,” pointing out the other chapbook in the children’s hands. The potential similarity, I felt, could strengthen the case for Peckham. It seemed a solid piece of evidence -- until I had to retract “Harp and Violin” from consideration, once my research revealed that it wasn’t a Peckham at all! It had to go. Better to be wrong now than later.
Fortunately, even after tossing out that picture, the research into “Two Girls” continued. I had an excellent and productive discussion with Philip about the portrait and its possible authorship. He proposed settling on “Manner of Peckham” or “Style of Peckham” for now, in the absence of an alternative term more closely tailored to the independent nature of American folk artists. Early scholarship in the folk art field consistently claimed that itinerant painters worked alone, a stark difference from European artist studios filled with apprentices.
Intriguingly, though, I’ve found that American folk painters often did influence one another. Even aside from extreme examples of collaboration, like the husband-and-wife team of the Chandlers, itinerant portraitists did not exist in a vacuum. These painters frequently crossed paths, communicated as colleagues, and observed each others’ works in their clients’ homes. In 1809, Peckham took lessons from the artist and entrepreneur Ethan Allen Greenwood, lending his earliest known work a bit of a “Manner of Greenwood.” And Massachusetts painters of later generations, such as Joseph Whiting Stock, often bring to mind Peckham’s visual style and his frank and forthright sense of characterization. All in all, “Manner of Peckham” is a very reasonable concept.
(James Humphreys, Jr., by Peckham, 1809, private coll.; Mrs. Prescott, by Greenwood, 1807, upcoming at New Orleans Auctions; Rosa Heywood, by Peckham, 1840, Colonial Williamsburg; Louisa (and John) Stock, by Whiting Stock, 1845, The Met)
I still do find “Portrait of Two Girls” most likely to be by the man himself. I haven’t yet found another artist whose style matches more closely — and I’ve even discovered whole new painters. (The "Dean Limner" and "Tweedy-Bird Limner" are upcoming. Yes, really.) But we can’t say it’s Peckham just yet, nor do the new owners, Allen Memorial Museum, have a proposed reattribution. Scientific testing is difficult, time-consuming, and costly. And with no studio records and no signatures, our options are limited to subjective connoisseurship, scarce historical tidbits, and sheer dumb luck.
An aside: not all was lost on the “Two Girls” chapbook front. A good alternative comparison point for the books and papers is Peckham’s portrait of Edward Hitchcock, the third Amherst College president and famed geologist. (It’s now been confirmed by Mead Art Museum as a Peckham after my extensive research, and a published article in Maine Antique Digest is forthcoming.) This piece has a similar level of meticulous and meaningful detail, especially the carefully titled books: the scientific journals in which Hitchcock published his dinosaur footprint research!
Ultimately, if nothing else, this was a lesson that some are not lucky enough to learn. It was incredibly frustrating to have to reject an existing attribution that I’d taken at face value – but that’s the nature of this sort of research. The currently available folk art information is often misguided, but not deliberately. It’s important to remember that when the study of this field began, there was nothing to work with. It’s centuries behind the study of European art. We are working from a disadvantage. It’s nobody’s fault that we cannot trust the record. You just have to figure it out, keep digging, and hope the error doesn’t run too deep.
- - -PART II. THE NEW CONTENDER- - -
But where does that leave us? If Peckham didn’t paint “Harp and Violin,” then who did?
Clues are scarce. We know very little about the painting. Charming as it is, it suffers from a severe lack of provenance, detail, or anything else. The online listing is tragically sparse:
The only real lead is my fortuitous discovery of the actual Harp and Violin book! Published by Benjamin Olds, the book is very clunkily named, “Stories about the balloon, windmill, sofa, bureau, harp, baseviol, violin, buglehorn, fire-engine, and wheelbarrow : in words of one, two, and three syllables.” It first appeared in print in 1835.
That gives us a solid start date for the chronology of this painting, but that’s not very helpful. Many painters were active in 1835. As the “Two Girls” research text points out, chapbooks were exceedingly common and broadly published. And the painting itself contains very few other visual cues that could be used to learn more about this work, aside from miraculously spotting that particular carpet in another painting. (Which has actually happened. Stay tuned for the “Hibiscus Carpet Kids.”)
Back then, as my research into “Two Girls” went on, I’d been pursuing other avenues and learning more about the most obscure painters, even those still unnamed and unknown. I’d built up a folder which, out of desperation, I named “That One Painter.” There was a particular distinctive style of the face, a “standard kid” like so many painters have. That’s not a bad thing. The consistency makes these works easy to spot — especially that one painter. As time passed, I found more, and more, and more…
And then this lovely double portrait of children came on the market (along with their mother), featuring the rarest of treasures: an artist’s signature!
The small scrawl in the corner says “Holman pinxt.” The mother’s portrait has more detail:
JW Holman, Boston, Mass, is none other than Jonas Welch Holman (1809-1888, Maine/Massachusetts). He’s not a famous name, but he’s worth getting acquainted. And we will.
A caveat: Holman’s artistic oeuvre is tremendously complicated — but it shouldn’t be. More on that later.
Let’s begin first with two solidly confirmed Holmans: this 1833 Boston man and woman at the Colby College Museum of Art. The paintings were in the collection of the famed folk art specialists, the Littles, until they donated them to Holman’s old alma mater. The husband painting is signed by Holman in the lower right hand corner, making the confirmation a slam dunk. His strongly consistent art style is also a useful hint — though Holman clearly put a bit more skill and polish into this group than the Bassett duo. I suppose we’ll never know why.
There are so few properly confirmed Holmans, I couldn’t resist the urge to keep looking. Frick Digital Collections saved the day once again: the Boston 1833 group is not a pair, but a trio! The little girl must be the couple’s daughter.
Frick’s records led me to this 1951 issue of Art in America, which adds a passive-aggressive caption:
Clearly, the Littles disagreed. It seems the adorable child and her puppy was not donated alongside her parents, but instead stayed in the Little collection until the 1994 Sotheby’s sale of their estate. It’s reprinted in the book “Maine and its Artists,” and it seems to be connected to Colby College, appearing alongside a book introduction from the then-president (in 1963). The painting’s location is currently unknown.
The existence of five signed and confirmed Holmans should give us a solid, clear, indisputable attribution key for his portraits. There can be no mistaking a Holman. Or so you’d think.
- - -
PART III. THE MISTAKEN IDENTITY
- - -
Of course, there’s more to it. Remember what I said about mistakes in folk art scholarship taking hold, and the difficulty of digging deep enough to properly fix them?
Hiding under the “Holman” name are a large number of paintings by the “Wilkinson Limner” – a mysterious painter finally identified as Lyman Parks in 2017 (thanks to research by folk art scholar Deborah Child). Parks was a counterfeiter who kept painting portraits while in prison! Perhaps his unique career is what gave him such a taste for complicated, meticulous detail in his artwork. But his style bears no similarity to Holman’s, nor does his life and occupation. Unlike Parks, a scoundrel of some repute, Holman was a man of the cloth, a Baptist preacher who taught English grammar, wrote poetry, and studied medicine at Harvard. One can only wonder how these two unique individuals crossed paths.
Consider the following portraits, the namesake Mrs. Wilkinson and Asa Gilmore, both confirmed as the works of Lyman Parks. Note the stylized hands, the defiant expressions, and the crisp details.
Now, here’s a wonderfully high-spirited pair of paintings at the Art Institute of Chicago, photographed by yours truly:
You might guess that these paintings are clearly the hand of Parks, and would be publicly catalogued as such. And you would be wrong.
It’s unclear when and why the “Jonas Welch Holman” name was applied. I was unable to find any rationale for this in the AIC’s own curatorial files, and I looked in all of the physical documents, twice. However, I did find decades and decades of research and correspondence with dealers and museum professionals… all of which said “these are obviously by the Wilkinson Limner, aren’t they?”
But, in the mid-2000s, the green-curtain pair were arbitrarily declared to be Holmans. The error took hold, and rooted deep, persisting for nearly two decades now. Those with an interest in sorting out the Holman and Parks mix-up, such as myself, have quite the mountain to climb.
For the sake of due diligence, I must highlight the possible cause. As per Caroline M. Riley’s Holman research, Winterthur Museum has a pair of Parks portraits on painted panels (try saying that three times quickly). The reverse is painted with a similar, yet visually distinct, pair of Holman portraits.* Bafflingly, current research claims that Holman must have painted both sets. Allegedly, Holman had two totally separate art styles, for some reason.
To be fair, Riley rightly points out that that supposed artistic behavior is unusual, uncommon, and nearly inexplicable. This is true. Folk painters had their own particular self-made techniques, and with a few exceptions, they were incredibly consistent. The budget-friendly William Matthew Prior offered cheaper and more sophisticated versions of his art, but his style remained the same. And Ammi Phillips evolved over time, because he painted thousands of portraits. Who wouldn’t improve?
We don’t know the real reason for the Holman-Parks double panels. Perhaps the commissioners were dissatisfied with the first rendition, and wanted a do-over by another artist. This seems far more believable than the proposition that the same hand is responsible for both these “realistic” and “folk” styles. (I’m still not entirely sure which is supposed to be which.) In all likelihood, we are just seeing two different artists at work. Occam’s razor applies to art history, too.
Here are those panels. Take a guess which is Parks and which is Holman — mind the curtains.
Granted, one set of portraits is clearly mimicking the other, or purposefully meant to match in some way. The perplexing Parks pair on panel was probably painted first, given the unnatural pose of the man’s hand. It’s not characteristic for what I know of Holman. But, regardless, this pesky set of paintings is the origin of the problem. Perhaps you didn’t need to know all that to follow along on this journey — you would be forgiven for skipping this part.
But, having told you what is Holman, I must also tell you what is not.
- - -
PART IV. THE ANSWER
- - -
Fortunately, the reappearance of the signed Bassetts has led to the further identification of many more actual Holmans. (Spoiler: he was “That One Painter” that plagued my notes.) With this reference point in hand, we can now confidently gather up all those other paintings out there that have the same face. And, unsurprisingly, there are more than a few…
(Links at the end.**)
They all deserve, and will receive, further research. Not every picture might turn out to be a Holman, but we’ll find out. I could also make a similar comparison of hands: Holman favors a particular pose with the index finger pointing and the other fingers softly curled. But, in the interest of brevity, I’ll skip that (though I suspect that ship has already sailed). Nevertheless, this vast compilation should give you an idea of how many Holmans are hiding in plain sight.
Best of all, there’s one more painting that fits into that group:
The faces are nearly identical to the look of the real Jonas Welch Holman. Stylistic similarities are abundant. The subject matter is also a solid match: Holman was a teacher and (slightly morbid) poet, a man of ethics who was strongly concerned with the welfare of children. Surely he would’ve included a thoughtful prop like that charming chapbook.
(1827 Philadelphia ad / 1888 “Poets of Maine”)
I’ll leave you with this Holman biography, also from Poets of Maine: “His life was long and useful, his character unspotted, and his end triumphant.”
Though he may not be Peckham, Holman was just as committed to doing good in the world. He is a talented artist, well worth knowing. And I hope, should the new owner of “Harp and Violin” ever learn of its true authorship, that they’ll feel the same.
- - -
ENDNOTES
- - -
*Red flags about those double-sided Holman-Parks panels were raised back in 1980 by notable dealer Stuart P. Feld, of Hirschl & Adler. He pointed out, in a response to a 1980 advertisement, that they are obviously not the same hand. He was right! (Courtesy of the AIC curatorial files.)
**I don’t even know where to begin with making a reference key to this. I’ve just numbered them. Here it is again.
1: https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/3167B/lots/332
2: https://auctions.neauction.com/online-auctions/new-haven-auctions/folk-art-family-portrait-5663745
3: https://worcester.emuseum.com/objects/50578/child-in-blue-dress?ctx=3cb7dc7ab8266efd98758162c9881cc723337c8e&idx=17
4: https://live.pookandpook.com/online-auctions/pook/pair-of-american-oil-on-canvas-portraits-of-children-1155439
5: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/joseph-goodhue-chandler-american-1813-1884-58-c-5241f9ccc2
6: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/manner-of-joseph-chandler-american-1813-1884-894-c-8dc4f10b3e
7: https://collections.fenimoreart.org/objects/325/martha-reed-warren?ctx=e534c367c7ef4ed8764418b7115bdde45cc62000&idx=230
8: https://collections.fenimoreart.org/objects/326/caroline-augusta-warren?ctx=e534c367c7ef4ed8764418b7115bdde45cc62000&idx=231
9: https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2669M/lots/271
10: https://www.invaluable.com/auction-lot/american-school-19th-century-portrait-of-a-young--646-c-22a45df9fb?objectID=121711290&algIndex=archive_prod&queryID=9a5f59f4090b614e7c49c6fd2d823c0d
11: https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/Portrait-of-an-Unidentified-Family/67CB17EFB6D048F2
12: This attribution has now been corrected to Holman :) https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/folk-art/paintings/jonas-welch-holman-portrait-young-man-writing-quill/id-f_42300282/
13: https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/2959M/lots/448
14: https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/American-School--First-Half-19th-Century/154E0A1B9B49B4E6
15: https://live.pookandpook.com/online-auctions/pook/american-oil-on-canvas-portrait-of-a-young-woman-1211420
16: https://www.artnet.com/artists/american-school-19/portrait-of-a-young-woman-and-a-boy-Bk0oN0NtRr1hG4VkS8WG-A2
17: https://www.bidsquare.com/online-auctions/pook/new-england-portrait-of-children-ca-1840-1943254
18: https://www.artnet.com/artists/joseph-goodhue-chandler/portrait-of-a-young-boy-DyOw3AICDaST-psyGlnRrQ2
