Early American Portraits Collection

Abigail and Jane Augusta - 1994

Edition of 250

Retail Price $995

In the early years of our country, portraits were a rare and highly valued art form. Academy-trained artists were few and far-between. When their services could be secured, the cost was prohibitive. But Yankee ingenuity came to the forefront, and a bold, inventive portrait style emerged. Practiced largely by unschooled itinerant portraitists, called limners, the style we now refer to as American Folk Portraiture enjoyed enormous popularity in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

Although their style appeared unsophisticated to the trained eye, the work of the folk portraitist was enthusiastically embraced by mainstream America. A Maine journalist, John Neal, wrote his stinging assessment of the limner's efforts in 1829, "You can hardly open the door of a best room anywhere, without surprizing or being surprized by, the picture of somebody, plastered to a wall and staring at you with both eyes and a bunch of flowers." Mr. Neal's criticism notwithstanding, folk portraiture is highly esteemed today for its universal appeal. What the portraits may lack in technique, they more than compensate in strength and exuberance of detail.

Folk Art Portraiture, long a passion of Wendy Lawton's, proved to be the inspiration for Abigail and Jane Augusta, the first edition in Lawton's Early American Portrait Collection. Abigail sits primly on the edge of her delicately-turned Windsor chair, proudly holding her precious doll, Jane Augusta. Abigail is 16" tall with a porcelain head and hands on a 13-joint, hand-carved wooden body. The bow-back Windsor chair is hand-carved and bent of select hardwoods, exclusively for The Lawton Doll Company. The hand-rubbed finish has been gently aged to simulate generations of use. The Lawton Doll Company name is incised on the under seat of the chair. Also an original sculpt by Wendy Lawton, Jane Augusta has been made in the tradition of the papier mache Milliner's Models of the early nineteenth century. Cast in composition and hand-painted to replicate a subtly aged patina, Jane Augusta patiently joins Abigail in sitting for the limner's brush.

Carrie and Sophia Grace - 1995

Edition of 350

Retail Price $1,250

Carrie poses for the limner's portrait seated on her family's treasured Windsor nanny rocker. Her cherished doll, Sophia Grace, is contentedly settled by her side. Carrie has porcelain hands and head on a fully jointed wooden body, standing 16" tall. Sophia Grace is 9" on a cloth body. The wooden bowback Windsor cradle rocker is included.

Clarissa Fields and Bangwell Putt - 2000

Edition of 175

Retail Price $1,295

More than 225 years ago, a blind girl named Clarissa Fields was given a rag doll she named Bangwell Putt. Little did she know that her doll would be carefully tended by her descendants and finally gifted to Memorial Hall Museum. The poems young Clarissa dictated to her sister are still pinned to the doll's slip. Bangwell Putt is now the oldest extant rag doll in America. It is to Clarissa's memory that we dedicate our version of Clarissa Fields and Bangwell Putt.

Bangwell Putt is used with permission from Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Memorial Hall Museum, Deerfield, Massachusetts.

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