portrait of a little girl holding red flowers

A native of Maine who ultimately established his portrait painting businesss in Boston, Sturtevant J. Hamblin is most often associated in tandem with the work of his brother-in-law, William Matthew Prior. Moving with Prior from Portland, Maine to Boston in 1841, Sturtevant is the only of three Hamblin brothers known to have explicitly advertised himself as a "portrait painter."

Two portraits signed by Sturtevant Hamblin bear identical blasted trees in their backgrounds, and are illustrated in Rumford, American Folk Portaits in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Washington, D.C., 1981) p. 27, fig. 18 and pp. 115-116, fig. 87.