Portrait of a Lady in Elaborate Lace Bonnet

Noah North began painting in upstate New York in the early 1830s. His work, executed in the simple linear painting style associated with earlier New England limners, shows a remarkable similarity to that of Milton William Hopkins, who was most likely North's painting instructor. The two men lived not far from each other, in Genesee and Orleans Counties, and, as Jacquelyn Oak has suggested, census evidence indicates North may have boarded in the Hopkins household during his training (see Oak, et al. Face to Face: M.W. Hopkins and Noah North (Lexington, MA, 1988), p. 23). In style and attention to detail, the portrait illustrated here is similar to that of Gracie Beardsley Jefferson Jackman, also completed on panel circa 1835 (see Oak, p. 93). See also Groce and Wallace, Dictionary of Artists in America (New Haven, 1957), p.474.