Lot 6: * AARON DEAN FLETCHER

painted circa 1830; in a period frame.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG BOY HOLDING A POCKET WATCH

framed 29 by 26 in. 73.57 by 66 cm.

oil on canvas

Robert W. Skinner Galleries, Bolton, Massachusetts, February 2000

Aaron Dean Fletcher was born in Springfield, Vermont. He was a self-taught artist, who began his career in the Springfield area, from about 1835 to 1839, by painting neighbors and friends. By 1840 he had moved to Keeseville, New York; around 1856, like many itinerant artists of the time, Fletcher traveled west to Indiana. He returned after a year to New York, where he continued to earn a meager living as an artist of naive portraits, and an occasional landscape. He died in Keeseville in 1902.