Sarah Perkins

Sarah Perkins, born on October 26th, 1771 in Plainfield, Connecticut, is known for her bust-length portraits of relatives, primarily executed in pastel, that reveal the likenesses of post-Revolutionary era eastern Connecticut residents.

In a September 1884 The Magazine Antiques article, historians Colleen Heslip and Helen Kellog crafted a persuasive case to support the identification of the notable “Beardsley Limner,” the unknown painter of the portraits of Dr. and Mrs. Hezekiah Beardsley in the collection of the Yale University Art Gallery, as Sarah Perkins. The identity of the Beardsley limner had long eluded scholars in the field of American portraiture, although the contributions of the artist to native painting have been illuminated through the scholarship of Nina Fletcher Little and Christine Skeeles Schloss.¹ At a 1981 Yale University Art Gallery workshop, Theodore E. Stebbins, the curator of American paintings at the Museum of Replica Handbags s in Boston, declared the Beardsley limner the “most important portrait artist in America between John Singleton Copley and Gilbert Stuart.”² Stebbins’ statement reinforces the import of the attribution of Beardsley’s known body of work to the female portrait artist.

While little documentation exists about the Beardsley limner, Heslip and Kellog pointed to the parallels between the lives of their sitters and the numerous stylistic similarities to argue that Sarah Perkins and the Beardsley limner were one in the same. Both Sarah Perkins’ father, Dr. Elisha Perkins, and Dr. Hezekiah Beardsley were esteemed physicians in Connecticut during the late eighteenth century and members of distinguished medical societies that often traveled around New England to share research and medical observations, so it is probable that the families were acquainted. Although there is no evidence that Perkins received formal artistic training, the social stature of her upbringing in the home of a prominent physician indicates that she was likely exposed to the work of noteworthy post-Revolutionary era artists working in Connecticut, including portraits executed by her extended relatives John Trumbull (1756-1843) and Winthrop Chandler (1747-1790).³

Portrait of a Blonde Haired Young Boy in a Blue Suit typifies Perkins’ formulaic approach to rendering facial features: exaggerated elliptical eyes, a thin-lipped mouth, and a nose delineated by a continuous shadow forming an arc from the far eyebrow to below the nostril. Moreover, this portrait evidences her distinctive backgrounds shaded from light to dark and her use of a dark contour line to define the figure against an ambiguous negative space.

For an in-depth discussion of Perkins’ oeuvre see: Colleen Heslip and Helen Kellog, “The Beardsley Limner identified as Sarah Perkins,” The Magazine Antiques, September, 1994, p. 584-565.

¹ Nina Fletcher Little, “Little Known Connecticut Artists,” Connecticut Historical Society Bulletin 22 (October 1957); Christine Skeeles Schloss, The Beardsley Limner And Some Contemporaries: Postrevolutionary Portraiture In New England, 1785-1805 (Williamsburg: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, 1972).

² Theodore E. Stebbins, quoted in Colleen Heslip and Helen Kellog, “The Beardsley Limner identified as Sarah Perkins,” ^{The Magazine Antiques, September 1994, 584.}

^3. Nina Fletcher Little, “Winthrop Chandler,” Art in America, vol. 35, no 2 (April 1947), 146.