A "woman could paint a likeness?" A group of rarely seen folk portraits from private collections highlight the careers of women artists who were bold enough to venture forth in search of commissions.

Between 1790 and 1845 a new generation of American portrait painters emerged working in a style that departed dramatically from the one that was dominant in the country's major urban centers. Their work, characterized by a certain visual simplification and stylization, an expressive use of color, and an emphasis on decorative pattern, is now called American folk portraiture, a term that is certainly vague and more than a little misleading. Although these artists each had their own distinctive manner, their work is united in its emphasis on a highly stylized, almost abstract image of the subject, rather than on a correct likeness.

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Twentieth-century scholars have often described folk portraits as the work of naive artists with limited training. Yet the diaries and letters of these artists as well as newspaper advertisements, indicate that folk portraits were produced during a time of unprecedented growth in the availability of art instruction. (1) Academies and schools, which often emphasized painting among other arts, could now be found in many small towns and were, in part, responsible for spreading the folk portrait style among teachers, students, and patrons. (2)

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At the forefront of this movement were several women artists who were educated in drawing schools and academies for young ladies. Their reasons for choosing painting careers careers varied from simply trying to help with family finances to embarking on the adventure of self-reliance. Not surprisingly, their writings often reveal the adversities as well as the triumphs they faced as artists and as women.

Most portrait painters during this period were itinerants who journeyed between communities in search of new commissions. Since a woman traveling alone was a cause for suspicion, itinerancy was especially difficult for women. In her autobiography, Roses and Thorns, Susanna Paine remembered that a "rumor had risen and spread in every direction ... that I had absconded from my native place--leaving behind me a husband ... and several young helpless children!" The rumor resulted in a "gradual coldness of manner" among prospective clients that temporarily halted her commissions. (3) Despite many such obstacles, dozens of women did manage to become accomplished professional portrait painters.