Erastus Salisbury Field

American painter Erastus Salisbury Field studied with Samuel F. B. Morse in New York during the winter of 1824. On his return to the rural isolation of Leverett, MA, he painted his earliest known work, the portrait of his grandmother Elizabeth Billings Ashley. His career as an itinerant portrait painter began in 1826, and most of his commissions came through a network of family associations in western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The portraits of 1836 to 1840 are considered his best. From 1841 he lived mainly in New York, where he expanded his subject-matter to include landscapes and American history pictures. There he presumably studied photography, for on his return to Massachusetts he advertised himself as a daguerreotypist. His few portraits painted after 1841 are copied from his own photographs and lack the expressive characterization and decorative power of his earlier work. From 1865 to 1885 his paintings were based primarily on biblical and patriotic themes.

Erastus Salisbury Field Images:
Mr. Pearce,c.1835
Mrs. Palmer and Her Twins
Mrs. Pearce,c.1835