Zedekiah Belknap (1781-1859) Lived/Active: Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont

Pair of Portraits, Lady and Gentleman, ca. 1840
Unsigned
Oil on single-board poplar panels
26” x 21 ½” (unframed)
Minor cupping to poplar panels commensurate to age, small scattered in-painting in background areas.
Provenance: Private Collection, Blacksburg, Virginia; Private collection, Swampscott, Massachusetts.
Working as an itinerant limner, specializing in life-size portraits, Zedekiah Belknap established a stylized formula that allowed him to paint quickly with use of bright colors and attention to detail but with minimal brush strokes. His sitter’s features are usually heavily outlined, set against dark backgrounds and their faces generally have a red shadow. Another attribute to works by Belknap are the scores of diagonal lines found on his panels, which were used to emulate canvas. He is known to have completed about 170 portraits before the end of his career in 1848, in Wethersfield, Connecticut.