Lot 163: Sarah Peale (MI/PA, 1800-1885), Wm. Walter

Sarah Peale (MI/PA, 1800-1885), Wm. Walter
oil on canvas, circa 1820, unsigned, housed in the likely original gilt composition frame. The sitter, William Bicker Walter (1796 - 1822), was the son of William Walter (1771 - 1814) and Sarah Bicker (1774 - 1811). His paternal grandfather, the Reverend William Walter (1739 - 1800), a 1756 graduate of Harvard and rector of Trinity Church, Boston, was a firm loyalist whose lands, buildings, and belongings on South Street W. in Boston were confiscated and sold to Samuel Quincy and others. The sitter, who graduated from Bowdoin College in 1818 and studied Divinity at Cambridge; is best known as an author "possessing an active fancy and great faculty of versification." His best known work , "Sukey," was first published in 1821 by Cummings & Hilliard, E. Bellamy, Printer. In 1822, Walter began his journey of "southern states to give lectures on poetry, but died shortly after his arrival in Charleston, SC." (from The Loyalists of Massachusetts and the Other Side of the American Revolution by James H. Stark, publisher The Salem Press Co., 1910.) Prior to taking his leave for Charleston, on December 4, 1822, William Bicker Walker wrote his "Last Wishes." In this document he writes, "The picture of myself - painted in Baltimore by Miss Sarah Peale - I give to my sister Harriot L. Hunter - as the best and last pledge of that affection which I have ever entertained for her, from infancy .---In looking upon it, she will think of William." This portrait was most likely done in 1822, when both the sitter and the artist were in Baltimore. A copy of the will accompanies this lot. Also accompanying this lot is a "Preface" handwritten by William B. Walter in Boston in 1822 giving his philosophical discourse on "poetry, sonnets, and ditties."
SS 35 x 28 in; DOA 44.75 x 33.25 in