+ Expand
Artist or Maker: 1797-1868
+ Expand
Medium: oil on wood panel
+ Expand
Dimensions: framed 24 1/4 by 20 5/8 in. 61.56 by 52.58 cm.
+ Expand
Provenance: Richard and Norma Bury, Morrisville, New York
G. William Samaha, Milan, Ohio
Hirschl & Adler Folk
+ Expand
Exhibited: A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century, The Gallery at Bristol-Myers Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992
Source and Inspiration: A Continuing Tradition, Hirschl & Adler Folk, New York, 1988
Whitney Museum of American Art, Sheldon Peck, A Retrospective, traveling exhibition, 1975-1976
+ Expand
Literature: Marna Anderson, A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992, illustrated in color, pp. 30-31
Frank J. Miele, Source and Inspiration: A Continuing Tradition (New York, 1988), p. 34
Marianne E. Balazs, Sheldon Peck: A Retrospective, exhibition catalogue, Whitney Museum of American Art, 1975-1967, checklist #16
Marianne E. Balazs, "Sheldon Peck," The Magazine Antiques, August 1975, pp. 273 - 284, ill. p. 277
+ Expand
Notes: Found in Cato, New York; one of a group of five family portraits.
Sheldon Peck was born in Cornwall, Vermont in 1797. Little is known of his youth, but by the 1820s he was executing likenesses in the crisp, angular style he would retain throughout his painting career. Peck married Harriet Corey of Bridgeport, Vermont in 1824, and the couple remained in Vermont until 1828, when they moved to Jordan, New York, a prosperous town on the Erie Canal that likely provided many opportunities for a portrait painter in search of commissions.
In 1836 Peck left New York for Illinois, arriving in Chicago in 1837, and shortly thereafter settled in Babcock's Grove, Illinois. He worked there and in Chicago as a portrait painter and ornamental painter until his death in 1868. Over the course of his career, Peck's style evolved from stiff, formal likenesses of dour sitters to the complex multiple portraits of his Illinois period, with full-length figures seated or standing in stage-like sets. These latter works often feature tromp-l'oeil grain-painted frames.
Excerpted from Marianne Balazs, "Sheldon Peck," The Magazine Antiques VIII (August 1975), pp. 273-284, and Paul S. D'Ambrosio and Charlotte Emans, Folk Art's Many Faces: Portraits in the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, 1987, pp. 116-119.
