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oil on panel

CATALOGUE NOTE

Painted circa 1828; the backing with the original cross bars. In a period giltwood frame. Inscribed in pencil: Oscar Gilbert Adams, Father of Helen Adams Snedicor.

Oscar Gilbert Adams was born in Harpersfield, Delaware County, New York. He was the son of Hiram Adams (b. 1805) and Elizabeth van Tyne Adams (b. 1801), both of Harpersfield.

The Oscar Gilbert Adams family portraits represent an important moment in Sheldon Peck's career. His portrayal of his subjects had evolved from an early, slightly academic and constrained style to one that was self-assured, masterful and abstract, clearly prescient of the high abstraction and idiosyncrasy of his later Illinois work. Peck, at this point, had become an itinerant, traveling from his native Vermont westward into New York state, on a journey that would bring him to Illinois in the 1850s. He had clearly found the artistic ground under his feet, and was fully engaged in supporting himself and his family as a professional portrait painter. The residual evidence of his training in the decorative arts, an influence that would stay with him throughout his career, is evident in his painting and stenciling of the chair depicted in this portrait. The portrait of Oscar Gilbert Adams is the "missing link" in a group of three family portraits of Elizabeth Tyne Adams; Hiram August Adams and Sally Adams, offered in Sotheby's Important Americana, January 23, 2005, sale number 8053, lots 945-946.