A King Uncrowned

In the folk art world, most scholarly battles are wars of attribution, not attrition. I was reminded of the sometimes fierce exchanges regarding who painted what when I walked though the folk art gallery of the Fenimore Art Museum today and saw our new case full of miniatures. Included in this arrangement are two small watercolor portraits signed by the Connecticut artist James Sanford Ellsworth.


The Ellsworth do not look like paintings that scholars would fight over; the style is so distinctive and bears no resemblance to that of any other known artist of the early and mid-nineteenth century. But in fact there was a battle over these tiny works, and it took place nearly 80 years ago.

The March 1932 issue of The Magazine Antiques carried an article with the headline “King versus Ellsworth.” In the article one Julia D. Sophronia Snow (I love these nineteenth-century names) related a conversation she had with an old woman who had been painted as a child in a watercolor miniature that looked for all the world like an Ellsworth seen at left below, in black and white). The woman insisted that the work (unsigned, by the way) was not by anyone named Ellsworth; rather it was done by “Josiah King, the man without legs, who rode about the country in a dogcart, peddling cutlery, framing pictures, and painting portraits.” For a blogger like me with a taste for the strange and unusual, this sounded too good to be true.

Ms. Snow went on to detail the results of her research into the life of Mr. King, and took great pains to describe the similarities and differences between his style and Ellsworth’s, using the old woman’s portrait as her basis. Her final words in the article were: “Collectors, look to your past ascriptions! Some of your haloed Ellsworths may have to be recrowned as Kings!” Even the Editor of the magazine weighed in to say that Snow had “won the encounter, and that, in consequence, many a crude little likeness hitherto ascribed to Ellsworth must be credited to another hand.”

It took more than twenty years for someone to mount a response. In the Autumn 1953 issue of Art in America, Lucy B. Mitchell published her research on Ellsworth. Apparently in response to the enduring notion that King painted some of these portraits, Mitchell poses a series of key questions, ones that should have been asked by the Editor of Antiques a generation earlier.

Why isn’t portraiture mentioned on King’s business card?

Why did King’s children, when interviewed, have no knowledge that he painted miniatures?

Why have no miniatures ascribable to King been found among his descendents or neighbors?

And the crucial question, at least for me: Why have no signatures by King ever been found on these miniatures?

Her conclusion: because King never painted them; Ellsworth did. Basing a body of work on the recollections of one elderly woman is too speculative to be taken seriously. I was surprised to find out that Josiah King managed to rule for twenty years, and disappointed to learn that there probably never was a legless folk artist who traveled the countryside in a dogcart pulled by two Newfoundland dogs.

Little Treasures Out on View April 1

Great things, so they say, sometimes come in small packages. This is especially true for folk art miniatures, which are often exquisite examples of the skillful handling of brush or pen. These works are difficult to exhibit for a variety of reasons: they can be impossible to light well; and being small, they need to be secure. We are very fortunate this year to have received a generous gift of a first-rate exhibition case designed especially for miniatures from one of our trustees, Katharine Booth, and her husband Robert. The case is upright, allowing the viewer to get close to the artwork, and it features its own interior lighting. It was my pleasant job to fill the case with appropriate miniatures for public display beginning on April 1st.

Two of the gems slated for inclusion in this case are small works in sepia wash on paper by a little known artist named Juliet Miles. I included these works in a 1999 exhibition on New York State Folk Art that we had here at the Fenimore Art Museum, but was unable to uncover much information about them. One (measuring about 4 ½” square) depicts two women on horseback and is titled “Ladies Riding.” The other (9” x 7”) is a likeness of an unknown woman next to a floral arrangement and titled simply “The Portrait.”

We do know that Miss Miles lived in Schoharie, New York, and began painting and drawing miniatures in about 1830. It is apparent that she painted for her own amusement, executing fruit and flower pieces as well as occasional portraits, such as can be seen here. We do not know any more than that.

Still, Miles’ virtuosity is apparent in the confident and precise brush and pen work in both pictures. She was obviously skilled in calligraphy too, judging by the titling of the portrait below the picture. Works such as these were often done for friends and family rather than for sale. Women in particular traded artworks for inclusion in friendship albums or as tokens of affection.

Someday, I think, we will find more of Juliet Miles’ work out there. In the meantime, you will be able to see these pieces better than ever before in our new exhibition case, and your close inspection will be rewarded with unprecedented access to some of our best works in miniature.