Paintings Worth Looking At

​​Upcoming at Eldred's this week (Nov 20-21, 2025) are three lots I've had the privilege of writing essays for: portraits by Samuel P. Howes, Jonas Welch Holman, and William Matthew Prior. The Howes and Holman are from my own collection, personally identified. You can read the lot essays on this page, or on the various online auction platforms. While it's challenging to part with any newfound treasures, they're ready for new homes.  - - - - Both auctions will begin at 9:30 EST, but keep in mind: Session II (Nov 20, 2025) starts at #5301, so #5438B and C - the Holmans and the Howes - will be about 137 lots into the auction, a little over two hours. I promise they are well worth the wait! And Session III (Nov 21, 2025) starts at #5601, so #5603 - the Prior - is up right away. Good luck to all!

In which a few intriguing social media discoveries are a good excuse to write about long-forgotten favorites. ( Daniel G. Lamont ) / ( Margaret B. Doyle ) / ( Otis Hovey ) - - -   DANIEL G. LAMONT (1817-1883) My initial foray into the Facebook antiques world was marked by the emergence of this curious and unique pair of portraits (Fig. 1). Shared to the “Early American” Facebook group on August 7, 2025 by an individual seeking more information about her mother’s collection, the style immediately struck me as familiar. I re-posted them as an open question, then quickly edited it once the answer occurred to me: Daniel G. Lamont. The more I looked at the portraits, the more I was convinced. They have a striking likeness to the portraits of Abby Weare Stone and Charles James Fox Stone (Fig. 2), a signed 1851 pair . 

The possibly-Peckham Interior Scene sold today at Eldred's for $13,000, estimated $3-5,000! I did not bid. Many thanks again for the opportunity to research and write on it. (I do hope to eventually find out where it ended up!) Should anyone else be interested in a lot essay, or a research inquiry of any sort, I can always be found at emilyesser1@gmail.com .

Recently, I had the privilege of contributing a lot essay for Eldred's upcoming Americana Week. I'd written in with a correction about a portrait once attributed to Deacon Robert Peckham, which was received and amended with exemplary grace. Several emails later, I found myself looking through the auction catalogue, and spotted a piece with a suspiciously familiar composition: this Interior Scene . Its likeness to Peckham-Sawyer Family (1817) is hard to miss. 

The members of the so-called “Prior-Hamblin school” weren’t a school at all. Colleagues? Competitors? We still barely know. The five usual suspects - W.M. Prior, S.J. Hamblin, G.G. Hartwell, W W. Kennedy, and E.W. Blake - are constantly compared, mixed up, and conflated. However, despite their profound similarities, they all had their own quirks - especially when it comes to a pair of eyes. Part 1 of this post will address, illustrate, and explain the PHS's five unique methods for the so-called windows to the soul. The PHS problem has been tackled by exceptional folk art scholars for generations before me, so I don't expect this post to solve it. However, I hope that it will offer some useful clues.  Read on for the Eyes of the Prior-Hamblins.  - - -

Hello all - my recent blog articles have been scarce, but I'm pleased to announce the American Folk Portraits Wiki ( https://americanfolkportraits.miraheze.org/wiki/Main_Page ) now features 250+ artists and 750+ signed/credibly inscribed portraits. These painters range from the well-known to the obscure, and span the entire 19th century. I hope this will serve as a valuable reference point for identification and attribution. Work on the wiki is far from complete, and will resume as soon as I finish this post. For now, enjoy! 

When the matched paintings of “ Newburgh Children ” and “ Palmer Children ” first appeared at Christie’s 2024 Important Americana (lots 429/430) , they were attributed to Edwin Weyburn Goodwin. But they bore a striking resemblance to the fine and elaborate portrait, “Miss Tweedy of Brooklyn,” attributed to Orlando Hand Bears for decades. As it turns out: Bears didn’t paint Miss Tweedy (real name Eliza Bird Tweedy.) Nor did he paint the identical portrait of Mary Louisa Bird — Eliza’s younger sister! And the “Tweedy-Bird Limner” was born.

Here's the transcript of my talk for the John Greenleaf Whittier Birthplace about Deacon Robert Peckham, "In Behalf of Oppressed Humanity." Many thanks to Whittier Birthplace director  Kaleigh Paré Shaughnessy, and everyone who attended.  Links are available here: Presentation Slides / Video . The transcript is verbatim (made with Turboscribe ); brackets indicate edits for clarity. This is a bit longer than most blog articles - thanks for reading, if you do! - - -

I’m delighted to announce that I’ve been asked to give an online lecture on Deacon Robert Peckham’s life and works, by the Whittier Birthplace, home of John Greenleaf Whittier, Peckham’s famous portrait subject. Among other new discoveries, I will be unveiling Peckham’s letters to John Quincy Adams, America’s 6th president. It is on February 27, 7pm Eastern time. Zoom registration is required, but it is free. I hope to see you there! - - - Sign-up link: http://bit.ly/peckhamwhittier or https://www.whittierbirthplace.org/events/zfj3f4a5ezsbsc7f5ba847cb7wp277   

What's your favorite Joseph Whiting Stock portrait? Maybe his charming niece and nephew? How about the one he painted after his death? - - - The girl on the left was sold as “Attributed to Joseph Whiting Stock (American, 1815-1855)” with much pomp and circumstance. It provides some wonderful catalog copy analyzing Stock’s difficulty with perspective, which I’m still very fond of, even if the attribution is dead wrong. Pun not intended. Guess what: the auction record for the identical companion portrait, the girl on the right , surfaced recently.

I’ll confess, I couldn’t figure out who Mr. Keeley is, either. Turns out there’s a reason. - - - Biographical information about this Massachusetts man is minimal. He was a traveling folk painter, like so many, who left a swath of beautiful portraits in his wake. Most of his surviving works have lost the artist’s name, but retain their centuries-old charm. Before I knew him as Keeley, he lived in my notes as “Probably a big-name, but not Peckham.” Unfortunately, he’s not a big-name. He’s barely known at all.

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.

What do you do when you can’t find an artist’s name? In my experience, the only option is just to keep looking, digging, and searching through paintings, gradually grouping by style and likeness. With time and effort, the process yields a collection that looks like they belong together, a valuable base to build upon. Sometimes, miraculously, a picture will turn up with a signed inscription on the back — in which case, you celebrate for 2 minutes and keep right on going. But, in the absence of any such breakthrough, the best method is to keep collecting images, getting to know the artists and their idiosyncratic quirks. After a while, they start to feel like anonymous pen-pals whose handwriting you’d recognize anywhere.  Without further ado, allow me to present the Soft Faces Painter. Fig. 1, various sources (see article text) Their work is characterized by (as you may guess) soft, childlike faces with stylized features; distant gazes with big, rounded eyes; simplified hands, often ...