Paintings Worth Looking At

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.