Lot Essay
Micah Williams (1782-1837) worked as a portrait artist principally in Monmouth County, New Jersey. His earliest likenesses of area residents post-date the War of 1812, and he worked through the late 1830s with a brief period of portait painting in New York City from 1829 to 1833. Period documentation of Williams' work indicates it was well received by his peers,
We... cheerfully express our opinion of his correctness of design and execution, as well worth the patronage of an enlightened public.. (Patterson Chronicle and Essex and Bergen Advertiser, Rumford et al., American Folk Portraits in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, 1981), p.193)
Williams is believed to have made his own pastel pigments, accordingly there is some color consistency to his work. In addition, those Williams portraits which retain their original framing elements reveal a distinctive manner of layering and affixing the portrait first to a newpaper backing then to the frame and finally to more newspaper (see Anderson, A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1992), p.40). While the slightly canted frontal pose and blue palette of the dress on the lady illustrated here are typical of Williams' work, she is nonetheless particularly well conceived with the elaborately figured tortoiseshell comb echoing the decorated fancy painted crestrail which in turn highlights the rose she holds in her hand.
We... cheerfully express our opinion of his correctness of design and execution, as well worth the patronage of an enlightened public.. (Patterson Chronicle and Essex and Bergen Advertiser, Rumford et al., American Folk Portraits in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Williamsburg, 1981), p.193)
Williams is believed to have made his own pastel pigments, accordingly there is some color consistency to his work. In addition, those Williams portraits which retain their original framing elements reveal a distinctive manner of layering and affixing the portrait first to a newpaper backing then to the frame and finally to more newspaper (see Anderson, A Loving Likeness: American Folk Portraits of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, 1992), p.40). While the slightly canted frontal pose and blue palette of the dress on the lady illustrated here are typical of Williams' work, she is nonetheless particularly well conceived with the elaborately figured tortoiseshell comb echoing the decorated fancy painted crestrail which in turn highlights the rose she holds in her hand.