Portrait of a Woman

E.W. Blake was one of several artists working in the proximity and under the influence of William Matthew Prior and Sturtevant Hamblen in nineteenth-century Boston. A physician at the Boston Lunatic Hospital, Blake is listed as Eli W. Blake in the 1850 Federal Census, which notes he was born in about 1820 in Connecticut. For more information, see David Krashes, “Understanding the Prior-Hamblen School of Artists a Little Bit Better,” Maine Antique Digest, July 2011.