Finding the Stetsons (William W. Kennedy, for Saratoga Fine Art)

This past August, at the 2025 Collectors Fair in Manchester, New Hampshire, I spotted a pair of portraits hanging on the display wall of Saratoga Fine Art. They could be nothing but Kennedys – and brand-new Kennedys, at that. I excitedly informed Walter Bazar, an old friend and who works with his brother Peter at Saratoga Fine Art, about the re-attribution. Within the hour, Walter had changed the label to William W. Kennedy, and a new pair of Prior-Hamblin portraits gained their names.

Kennedy’s portraits have a sensibility all their own. His paintings are infused with a high level of technical ability, competently capturing the sitter’s distinctive looks with unique stylization. Like any other artist, he has his quirks – wide-set eyes, broad faces, gently curved hands, firmly outlined features. With practice, it’s possible to spot a Kennedy from a mile away. And, more or less, that’s exactly what happened. Very few signed examples of William W. Kennedy’s works are known, which has hindered his broader recognition. As one of the Prior-Hamblin School painters, Kennedy shared their chronic aversion to taking credit. He also joined in the group’s fondness for flat, minimalist rendering. Hence, it’s easy to mistake the Prior-Hamblin works for one another; Prior tends to get all the credit. So, it is all the more exciting to be able to reattribute them as they deserve. 

Best of all, some time after the Collectors Fair, a number on the reverse of the portraits (#543) revealed a provenance trail that led back to Sotheby’s, Jan 26, 1974 – over fifty years since the pair’s names were last known. Now, it has been revealed: they are Elijah Stetson and Mrs. Stetson. They were probably residents of New Hampshire, where Kennedy is known to have painted in 1847, and where the abolitionist newspaper Herald of Freedom was published. For now, the mysterious Captain(?) Stetson and wife remain out of the reach of definitive identification. But who knows what the future could hold?

The Stetsons in the Sotheby’s catalog

It’s been a long time since we learned anything new about the elusive Mr. Kennedy. He was hard to find in his own time, too, prompting his brother to place a want-ad for him in his own hometown in 1850. Information on Kennedy’s career remains frustratingly scarce. In scholarship, he’s always lagged far behind the rest of his Prior-Hamblin cohort. For that matter, decisive documentary proof of his ties to the group has not yet surfaced. At present, we have only one surviving relic of his career, written in his own words: a 1845 Nantucket advertisement for “A New Style of Portrait Painting,” featuring “W.W. Kennedy of Boston.” He was proud of his trade, and boasted about his abilities with confidence. For a few weeks on Nantucket that summer, he sold $3 portraits, painted in one sitting, “warranted as correct likeness as can be produced by forty sittings.” Kennedy knew what he could do, and he wasn’t afraid to say so. The likenesses from his Nantucket period are strikingly competent, artistically sound and plausibly realistic. $3 was a good bargain. Unusually, he signed the portrait of Captain David Worth (left) - and note the sitter’s earring, just like the portrait of Mr. Stetson. 

1845 William W. Kennedy portraits from Nantucket (Capt. David Worth and an unidentified man)

But aside from Kennedy’s eye-catching confidence in a lone newspaper ad, we have almost no reference point for the man himself. Our primary source of information is through his own body of work, a strikingly large array of portraits (130+) – highly unusual for an artist about whom so little is known. Occasionally, letters held in the sitter’s hands reveal a name and address, detailed in neat cursive, with a postmark of Boston or Baltimore, depending on Kennedy’s residence at the time. But, more often, the face is the priority. His focus was on capturing a good likeness, and it shines through his work, creating a clear thread we can easily follow. The complexity of Kennedy’s portraits varies over time; like the other Prior-Hamblin artists, he started small and went large, evolving over time from simple headshot pictures to increasingly grand half-length paintings. But his commitment to the art of portraiture never wavered, and while his style evolved and shifted over time, it never truly changed. 

Back in Manchester, I had thought I recognized the paintings: Mr. and Mrs. Peace, a signed pair that serve as an attribution key to William W. Kennedy’s portraits. Moments later, I realized, the Kennedys at Saratoga Fine Art did not share the same faces, and were clearly different people. Nonetheless, from twenty feet away, they’d certainly looked the part. The similarity is striking! Though Mr. and Mrs. Peace’s full names aren’t known, they can be confidently dated to 1847, with a verso inscription “Presented by L.G. Hill, Great Falls” [New Hampshire] in Kennedy’s lavish script. However, moments later, at the Collectors Fair, I realized I was wrong about the Peaces. By 1847, Kennedy had successfully merged the styles of his sharp, detailed 1844-45 works, and his simplified, soft-faced 1846 pieces, which demonstrate more of William Matthew Prior’s influence. 1847 Kennedys are a happy medium, stylistically consistent and rendered with great skill. And this is almost certainly the year that he painted the Stetsons.

The Stetsons (above) as compared to Mr. and Mrs. Peace (below)

As we can learn from the Saratoga Fine Art label text:

Prior School artists were active abolitionists. The paper in the gentleman's hand in the portrait may be a fellow abolitionist who worked for the newspaper Herald of Freedom, which was published in Concord, New Hampshire from 1835-1846.The paper was semi- weekly edited by Nathaniel Peabody Rogers under the auspices of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Society. Rogers, originally a lawyer, became a dedicated abolitionist and social reformer; he edited the paper from June 1838 to June 1846 and was a tireless advocate for immediate emancipation, women's rights, temperance, and even early animal rights. Contemporary notices praised its unapologetic moral outrage at slavery.

(Read the fact sheet for more information on the Herald of Freedom) 

But there is a strange complication. 1844, not 1847, is the final year in which the Concord Herald of Freedom’s masthead resembled the depiction in Mr. Stetson’s portrait, with that particular type-face and layout. After an acrimonious ownership dispute, its design was altered under new ownership. And the new masthead was too starkly different to possibly be depicted in this painting. Most unusually of all, by 1847, the Herald of Freedom was already a thing of the past: the newspaper’s final issue bears the date October 23, 1846, coinciding with the death of renowned editor Nathaniel Peabody Rogers. 

What can we learn from this? It’s hard to say, but that specific newspaper must have meant something to Mr. Stetson. If the paper had actually been in print in 1847, then its presence would be less significant. It would be conceivable that he could’ve just grabbed something off the nearest shelf. But he did not. So, what is the symbolism of including a specific back-issue of a newspaper, now out of print? Could he have submitted a piece to the newspaper, or been a neighbor or friend of Nathaniel P. Rogers, or other affiliated abolitionists? As of yet, we simply don’t know. 

Ruling out other possibilities, there is simply no way that Kennedy could have painted these portraits in 1844. For a reliable counterpoint, we may turn to a signed 1844 Kennedy portrait of a young lady with a book. It is recognizably the same artist’s work, but visibly lacks those valuable three years of learning, improvement, and practiced confidence. And Kennedy’s 1846 work, while significantly more advanced, reflects the flatter and more simplified manner of the training he must have received from Prior. By 1847, Kennedy was returning to form, advancing in detail and realism with the new tools he had gained. 

Unfortunately, as of yet, we know nothing about the Stetsons except for their evident abolitionist sympathies. Aside from the striking inclusion of the newspaper, there are only minimal visual cues to work with. His earring suggests a profession at sea – perhaps he is Captain Stetson – but there are no other significant props. And Mrs. Stetson holds a rose, rather than a book or a paper or letter, which does not make such a clear and decisive statement. It is possible that the man was the more politically and socially active of the two. But we can barely begin to speculate on Mr. Stetson’s decision-making process. Where does that leave us, though? In the absence of decisive clues, it is hard to pin these two down to a place or a time. However, searching elsewhere in Kennedy’s oeuvre brings us back to New Hampshire. An inscribed 1847 painting* of a young lady from Great Falls, NH, bears a noticeable, almost familial, resemblance to our pair of portraits. Could she have been a young lady from the Stetson family? Or is it simply a hallmark of Kennedy’s consistent style? 

*This image was found in the research files of the late Jacqueline Oak, of Shelburne Museum, to whom I am grateful for the pioneering scholarship. Many thanks also to Dr. Paul D'Ambrosio for sharing the files.

Though now unlocated, “Miss Hannah” is a very useful reference point. The envelope in her hand names her only as Miss Hannah, last name obscured, and cements Kennedy’s whereabouts and art style in 1847. The postmark is stamped Boston – a Kennedy trademark – and confirms that he was still living in the city that year. Furthermore, the location of this portrait connects chronologically to Mr. and Mrs. Peace of Great Falls. Notably, the letter in Miss Hannah’s hand is the earliest known appearance of the stamped-letter hallmark. The other best examples are two other subsequent Kennedy works, both from his later Maryland era. The portraits of C.G. Ringrose and A.J. Willis were painted once Kennedy had moved to Baltimore, and, tellingly, both bear the appropriate postmark. Placing the portraits side by side gives us a better impression of Kennedy’s improvement and refinement over time, charting his artistic trajectory from 1847 to the 1850s and beyond. 

It is clear that the elegant, calligraphic handwriting on the envelopes is nearly identical, indicating Kennedy’s authorship of the entire group, and thus pointing towards a decisively attributed body of work. Best of all, the writing compares favorably to not only the 1847 Peace inscription, but also Kennedy’s signatures dating back to 1844 and 1854. He had a tendency to inscribe his works in faint graphite, so his signature is difficult to discern; still, it can be observed and compared with confidence. 

Returning to Great Falls, the geographical connection may hold some significance. The December 20, 1844, issue of Herald of Freedom re-published a sharply worded opinion piece from The Liberator, condemning John R. French, and by proximity, his associates such as Rogers. Notably, that acerbic Liberator editorial, while decrying French for his ownership claims over the paper, includes the following:

As for the 'solemn preliminaries' alluded to, they were raised by Mr. French's special friends from Great Falls.

The controversy had primarily centered around French’s refusal to print the proceedings of the New Hampshire Anti-Slavery Convention of the prior month, claiming “we have neither the room, nor the disposition, to do anything of the kind.” This may have been due to a rift with William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, who was appointed the head of the committee at the Anti-Slavery Convention to investigate this brewing dispute. Regardless of French’s exact motivations, despite his stubborn obstinacy, he still had his supporters, including those from Great Falls – which is now a confirmed location for three Kennedy paintings. 

As noted in the Dec 12, 1844, issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, the purported friends from Great Falls were “David M. Folson and John Morrison.” The latter was, in fact, named James Morrison. And, in No. 36 of the 1844 Herald of Freedom, Nov. 13, he wrote a strongly worded letter in support of John R. French, calling him “our modern King David - the champion and printer of the Herald of Freedom.” Morrison argued that French’s mishaps and human errors did not outweigh the tremendous amount of good he’d done by supporting the Herald of Freedom. He concluded his letter with well wishes for the hard-working Nathaniel P. Rogers, who succumbed to his poor health only two years later.

Dear friend Rogers, I have learnt from you by the Herald, that you have been sick for a long time. When we see you so fast wearing out, it grieves us; but when we think of the service in which you have worn out, our sorrow turns into joy. Oh, how many mothers and sisters, fathers and brothers, will yet rise up and call you blessed. Please receive the enclosed note from your sincere friend, one that will always respect you for the good you have done for my down-trodden countrymen, especially the slaves.

There is ample evidence to confirm the support of the Great Falls abolitionists for the paper’s original management. But, unfortunately, it does not lead us any further to a conclusion. Morrison, the letter-writer, was far from the only abolitionist in the vicinity: a plethora of names appeared in the 1842 announcement of the Strafford County Anti-Slavery Meeting, convening in Somersworth, Great Falls, a mere five years before Kennedy came to town. 

Was Mr. Stetson in attendance there? We simply don’t know: no record of an Elijah (or Elisha) Stetson appears in the Herald of Freedom. He is nearly as elusive as Kennedy himself. It is a challenging task, looking back so far in history and trying to delve into its secrets. But it is a tempting question that invites further attempts to answer it.