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Woman with Gold Necklace
ca. 1850 Attributed to Prior-Hamblen School oil on canvas 27 1/8 x 22 1/4 in. (69 x 56.5 cm) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. and museum purchase made possible by Ralph Cross Johnson 1986.65.134 Not currently on view
Woman with Gold Necklace combines the Prior-Hamblin School’s enthusiasm for portraiture, ornamental painting, and landscape scenery. Aside from a lively business in portraiture, William Matthew Prior painted several landscape scenes, which he referred to as “fancy pieces,” a term used in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to describe a variety of arts such as decorative painting, knitting, and quilting. His advertisements boasted that he worked “in a very tasty style.” (Vlach, Plain Painters: Making Sense of American Folk Art, 1988)
For more information about this work visit the Luce Foundation Center.
Keywords
Figure female
painting
folk art
paint - oil
fabric - canvas
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