Lady of Squire Williams House
ca. 1829
Medium
Painting
Classification
Painting
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Keith and Lydia Jones
Accession Number
1999.94.2
Tags
Art Historical Context
**Lady of Squire Williams House (ca. 1829) is a charming portrait by Erastus Salisbury Field, pioneering American folk artist born in 1805 in Massachusetts. Capturing a woman from the waist up adorned with a fashionable hat, this early work exemplifies Field's self-taught style during his formative years as a traveling portrait painter. At around age 24, Field produced such pieces for local families, blending naive realism with bold, flattened forms typical of early 19th-century folk art. Painted in an era when portraiture democratized self-representation for America's rising middle class, th...
About the Artist
Erastus Salisbury Field · 1805–1900
1805–1900