Painted Portrait of a Seated Mother Presenting Her Newborn - Sold

Possibly painted by  RESON B. CRAFFT (1809-1877)
Probably Ohio or Kentucky, circa 1835
Watercolor on parchment, 9 1/8 x 7 7/8 inches, in a period grain-painted frame.

This work is closely related to works by the portrait and miniature painter R. B. Crafft, an Ohio-born artist best known for his celebrated portrait of “The Merchant,” which he signed and dated August 16th 1836 / R. B. Crafft,” one of the highlights in the collection of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, and illustrated in Beatrix T. Rumford, Gen. Ed., American Folk Portraits, paintings and Drawings from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center (Boston, 1981), pp. 75-76.  Characteristics of this artist observed both in ‘The Merchant” and in this watercolor double portrait include the use of swagged drapery, a sophisticated modeling of faces, and the depiction of selected interior props at unusual angles. In relationship to the small known body of works by R. B. Crafft, this example is a first in several respects:  the first small scale or “miniature” portrait to be discovered, the first example of the artist’s use of watercolors, and the first example of an American folk painting known to us utilizing parchment or vellum as a medium. It is significant to note Reson B. Crafft’s use of parchment or vellum as the chosen medium for a Masonic apron that he painted and decorated about 1850 that belonged to Walter Hamilton Hays of Bourbon County, Kentucky (1826-1894) that is now in the collection of The National Heritage Museum in Lexington, Massachusetts.

An itinerant portrait painter, Crafft is known to have worked in Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Iowa, and Mississippi, between 1836 and 1866. In 1838 he was in Clinton, Vermillion County, Indiana, where he painted portraits of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Filson, now in the Allen County Fort Wayne Historical Society.  On February 3, 1844 he was sufficiently confident of his ability to advertise in The Fort Wayne Sentinel that “All Likenesses are warranted correct and satisfactory or no charge will be made.” About the same time he did portraits of the Indian chief Francis La Fontaine and three members of his family. Crafft is said to have painted in Louisville and Madison County, Kentucky, in 1845, and in Jefferson County, Kentucky, in 1853.  A pair of signed portraits of a Lexington, Mississippi couple is dated 1854, and by 1865 Crafft had executed at least one very accomplished academic portrait in Danville, Kentucky. The latest signed portrait by Crafft is dated 1866.