Cherubic and solemn faces of Nineteenth Century children by artist William Matthew Prior catch and steal a viewer’s eye. Prior’s portraits of adults are more severe, documenting the life of coastal New England from Maine to Boston, but they, too, compel.
Portraits by the prolific folk artist are the subject of the exhibition “Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed” on view at the American Folk Art Museum through May 26. The first exhibit devoted solely to Prior’s work, “Artist and Visionary” was organized originally by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. It brings to New York City more than 40 oil paintings by the artist whose known works number well over 1,500, and whose yet undiscovered work could increase that number markedly. The paintings on view span the years 1824 to 1856 and are drawn from public and private collections.
Prior’s works, distinctive for his gorgeous children and the care with which he portrayed his sitters, exhibit a progression in skill. His early efforts show talent and skill; his later ones are masterful.
Born in 1806 in Bath, Maine, Prior relocated to Portland at age 18. As the major ship building town of the period and a center of trade, Bath was quite sophisticated. Portland, also cosmopolitan, offered a flourishing arts community. Prior’s first apprenticeship there was with his future father-in-law Almery Hamblin of a well-established family of artisan house painters. That connection was the foundation of the Prior Hamblin school of painters.
He also allied himself with Charles Codman, the city’s first professional ornamental and decorative painter whose studio served also as a meeting place for the city’s artists. Codman had apprenticed in Boston to decorative painter John Ritto Penniman, an assistant to Gilbert Stuart, and he painted clock faces for Simon Willard. Prior may have studied landscape painting with Codman, but no clue has emerged yet as to his training in academic portraiture. It is suggested that Prior’s association with Codman and his fellow artists may have exposed him to Stuart’s work. There may have been a deeper connection with Stuart than documented, although the artist himself was only 12 when Stuart died, as Prior named a son Gilbert Stuart Prior. Whatever his training, Prior’s portraits were desired by the burghers of Portland and Bath to which he returned in 1827, and later Boston, where he relocated in 1840, living first in the West End and then East Boston. His growing Prior family was accompanied in the move by his in-laws, painters Nathaniel, Joseph and Sturtevant Hamblin and their families.
The earliest extant portrait by Prior, and the earliest work on view, is that of Rosamond Clark Hamblin, his future wife, whom he painted in 1824 and married in 1828, although sources allude to a first portrait made in 1823. Prior’s 1825 “The Artist as a Young Man: Self-Portrait” exhibits a markedly higher degree of skill. While the portrait of Hamblin is considered rather amateurish, with sketchy brushwork and somewhat awkward, her face is finely detailed. Prior’s own likeness is three-dimensional, balanced with careful tonality and facial modeling, closer to his later work.
Prior’s talent was indisputable, but he had the added advantage of being a canny businessman. An 1827 advertisement in the Maine Inquirer of Bath offers ornamental painting: “Old Tea Trays, Waiters, &c. re-jappaned [sic] and ornamented in a very tasty style.” An ad placed in the Inquirer in 1830 spells out his rates: common side portraits on canvas 22′6 inches, $10; gilt [sic] frame $3; full length sitting for $15, erect or leaning, with ornamental background, $25; children painted full length for $8, when four or six are represented on one picture, reduced price. Prior also performed framing and offered military, standard, sign and ornamental painting. His financial savvy and flexibility enabled him to continue to paint in hard times, while his contemporaries were forced to take up other occupations to support themselves and their families.
Depending on the agreed-upon fees, Prior’s portraits spanned an arc between flat depictions without shade or shadow and an intermediate blend of the flat and the academic to the more costly work that was more academic, more fully painted, more developed. The artist worked in oil on canvas, oil on cardboard or academy board, oil on glass, oil on wood and oil on paper. He also used gouache on cardboard.
Flat paintings, which outnumber the others three to one, were often made in oil on cardboard or oil on canvas. Prior used broad areas of color to delineate form, the face, neck and other features, along with minimal shading. In most, the eyes are carefully drawn and highlighted. In his more finished work, drapery or tassels are visible and details as to the sitter’s social or business position are included. Although he offered full-length portraits, only those of children are known so far.
Prior’s 1830 portrait of Abraham Hammatt, owner of one of the ships Prior’s father commanded, demonstrated his ability to compete with the academically trained artists who were thick on the ground in Boston. The painting was exhibited in 1831 at the Boston Athenaeum.
Prior’s subjects were largely of the emerging middle class, citizens wishing to acquire the trappings of material success. His portraits open a window on the people of Bath, Portland and Boston in the mid-Nineteenth Century. His connections to the causes and movements of his time also are reflected in some of his portraits.
In the late 1830s and early 1840s, one William Miller, upstate New York farmer, veteran of the War of 1812, Freemason and self-taught Baptist preacher, whose theory of the second coming of Jesus Christ, Adventism and the end of the world attracted nationwide followers known as “Millerites,” came to Prior’s attention. Prior was engaged to paint Miller for a book by Boston preacher and publisher Joshua V. Himes, Views and Prophecies and Prophetic Chronology Selected from the Transcripts of William Miller , although a planned sitting did not take place. Instead, Prior painted Miller four times.
One example made was lithographed for an 1841 book on Miller. A pair of portraits on view depicts William Miller and his wife, Lucy Miller, and are attributed to Prior. Another example on view of Miller alone was made after Miller’s 1849 death and was the subject of Prior’s 1860 book The Empyrean Canopy . Prior also created a chart of Miller’s Advent movement that was disseminated among the membership, also a subject in the book. In 1862, he published The King’s Vesture, Evidence from Scripture and History Comparatively Applied to William Miller , an argument that Miller was Christ in the second coming. Prior named a daughter Balona Miller after the preacher.
Prior’s interest in Millerism was no small involvement. Between 1841 and 1843 he crusaded for the Millerites and made art in support of the movement, but after the world failed to end, Prior turned his attention to expanding his painting business. He built a three-story studio building near his East Boston home and upped his production. His renewed efforts saw an upswing in children’s portraits, even more charming now with added detail of pets or toys. The introduction of the daguerreotype may have been a big factor in his increase of children’s portraits; adults might sit still for as long as it took to make a daguerreotype but children would find it difficult.
Around the same time Prior painted William and Nancy Foy Lawson; the latter was related to a well-known Millerite activist. The Lawsons represent the first of Prior’s images of African Americans, and the two paintings are considered masterpieces. Nancy Foy Lawson is dressed stylishly and holds a book, signifying education. William Lawson was a successful merchant, with a watch chain and a smoldering cigar, alluding to his material success.
Both paintings are signed and dated prominently on the front of the canvas, interpreted as Prior’s interest in Abolition. What is notable is that while Boston was the center of Abolition in New England, racism persisted. Prior’s portraits of the middle class Copeland family, abolitionist William Whipper and other African Americans of the period identified him as a racial egalitarian. He had written on the matter as well.
He may have ultimately exhausted the supply of sitters in Bath, Portland and Boston as he later traveled farther afield, even as far as Baltimore, painting portraits of new clients.
“Artist and Visionary: William Matthew Prior Revealed” is accompanied by a catalog by Jacquelyn Oak, the originator of the exhibition at the Fenimore Art Museum, and Gwendolyn Du Bois Shaw. Oak is at work on a complete catalog of Prior’s works. The exhibition sponsor, the Henry Luce Foundation, provided partial funding for the exhibit and the catalog. Funding was also provided by the American Folk Art Society and the Beryl P. Haas Charitable Remainder Unitrust. The exhibit at the American Folk Art Museum is sponsored in part by Joyce Berger Cowin, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and by the David Davies and Jack Weeden Fund for Exhibitions.
The American Folk Art Museum is at 2 Lincoln Center. For more information, www.folkartmuseum.org or 212-265-1040.
