Lot 29: * STURTEVANT HAMBLIN

painted circa 1840; in the original silver-gilt frame.

PORTRAIT OF A YOUNG BOY WITH FLOWERS

framed 30 by 25 in. 76.2 by 63.5 cm.

oil on canvas

A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century, The Gallery at Bristol-Myers-Squibb, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992

Marna Anderson, A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton, New Jersey, 1992, illustrated in color, p. 24

The Woolens Estate, North Carolina

David A. Schorsch, New York

Sturtevant J. Hamblin was born into a Portland, Maine family with a long tradition as painters and glaziers. In his youth Hamblin worked with his father and three brothers in a painting business in Portland. By 1839, he had moved in with his brother-in-law William Matthew Prior (1806-1873), whom his sister Rosamond had married in 1828. Shortly thereafter he followed the Priors to Boston, and lived with them at various addresses between 1841 and 1856.

Hamblin worked as a portrait painter until 1856, when he and his brother Joseph appear in directories in the "Gent's furnishings" business. His long association and stylistic affinities with Prior and a number of other mid-19th century folk painters prompted early scholars to call this group the Prior-Hamblin School. Despite similarities to Prior, Hamblin's portrait sitters are distinguished by pale, tapered hands, subtle facial highlights, and the use of a wider assortment of props and backgrounds.

Excerpted from Nina Fletcher Little, "William M. Prior, Traveling Artist, and His In-Laws, The Painting Hamblins," The Magazine Antiques, January 1948, pp. 44-48; Paul S. D'Ambrosio and Charlotte Emans, Folk Art's Many Faces: Portraits in the New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, 1987, pp. 93-94; Beatrix T. Rumford, ed., American Folk Portraits: Paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Boston, 1981, pp. 112-117.