Oil on canvas (lined), unsigned, presented in a period white pine frame.

SS 27.25 x 23.25 in.; DOA 32.5 x 28 in.

By descent through the family of Julia Henry, Halifax County, Virginia

This half-length portrait of a young woman with dark hair relates most stylistically with Thompson's paintings completed circa 1810-1812.

Cephas Thompson was a successful self-taught artist who supported his family as as an itinerant portrait painter. He maintained a home in Middleboro, MA throughout his life, where he was born into an affluent family of farmers, but spent a great deal of his winters working in the south. He first advertises as a "portrait painter from Boston" in Charleston in 1800. Despite a lack of commissions in South Carolina, Thompson returns south in 1804 - first to Baltimore and then Charleston again.

Thompson receives a much warmer reception on his second trip south. He is encouraged and returns to Virginia in 1807 where he is commissioned by many prominent families to paint their likenesses. Thompson was most prolific between 1807-1812 while in Alexandria, Richmond, and Norfolk, averaging sixty-five portraits in a six-month season.
See "A Most Favorable and Striking Resemblance: The Virginia Portraits of Cephas Thompson (1775-1856)" by Deborah L. Sisum for further information on Thompson and his work (Journal of Southern Decorative Arts, MESDA, Summer 1997, Volume XXIII, Number 1).

Old tears in upper left quadrant; scattered re-touch visible under black light, but not majorly impacting face or hands; yellow pine stretchers are likely replaced.

$2,000 - 4,000