Below you'll find a list of all posts from 2016
The Legend When Lewis Penn Witherspoon Balch sat for his portrait in the studio of William Edward West (1788-1857) in Baltimore, Maryland around 1840, he was in his early 50s. According to a family biographer, six years earlier Balch had freed his 22 slaves and spent the equivalent of $40,000 to pay for their supplies and passage to Liberia.((George C. …
Introduction The second of five family portraits in search of an artist was Woman in Red. The owner thought the subject might be Elizabeth (Eliza) Collins Lee (1768-1858). The first step toward learning the name of the artist and the subject was to find the date the artist painted Woman in Red. Date Portrait subjects, of course, wanted to look their best so, it almost …
Five family portraits of five family members, most from different branches of the same family tree. The owner knew the names of four of the sitters, but not the names of the five artists. Here are the paintings: Two of the artists were familiar friends, so familiar that I recognized their work almost instantaneously. But, that “blink” moment always needs to be proved — …
A specialist in Gilded Age portraiture suggested the artist of Lilian de Peyster Post Pulsford might be Wilhelm Heinrich Funk. Who? To be absolutely clear, no proof exists that Wilhelm Heinrich Funk was the artist of the portrait of Lilian dePeyster Post Pulsford Walker. But, his life story rivals Lilian’s, and art critics of his day praised his “fearless freedom of brushwork… general gusto, and joyousness and …
The art investigation into the life of Lilian dePeyster Post Pulsford Walker clarified why such a lovely portrait was sent to the auction block as a painting by an unknown artist, but had not revealed the artist. I returned to the two original clues. The first clue was an initial and name, probably inscribed by the artist. on the top canvas …
The painting’s subject, Lilian dePeyster Post Pulsford would have been taught that a lady’s name appears in the newspaper twice: her wedding announcement and her obituary. But she shattered the rule when details of her Reno divorce appeared on the front page of the New York Times. Two years later, on March 19, 1913, she made the news again when her quiet marriage to Allen Walker at …
