William W. Kennedy

painted circa 1845.

According to American Folk Portraits from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, "Kennedy is perhaps the least well-known of the portraitists referred to as the 'Prior-Hamblin artists.'  Recent research by the Folk Art Center has revealed fourteen signed examples of Kennedy's work, which have provided the stylistic basis for an additional 39 unsigned attributions. [He frequently placed] a rose in the outstretched hand of female subjects...although he sometimes depicted children full length, his portraits on canvas generally show a half-length subject seatedin a side chair that is either draped or shaded half-light, half-dark. His likenesses are often on small pieces of academy board, of the variety frequently associated with artists of the Prior-Hamblin group. For further information see Beatrix T. Rumford, American Folk Portraits from the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center, Little Brown & Co., New York, 1981, pp. 136 - 137.