The Beardsley Limner Biography

The identity of the artist, named the Beardsley Limner after the portraits of Dr. Hezekiah and Elizabeth Davis Beardsley (c.1789) at Yale University Art Gallery, remains uncertain but the surviving portraits indicate that he or she worked in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York from circa 1785 to 1800.

The Beardsley Limner’s work was first identified by Nina Fletcher Little who in 1957 illustrated and discussed six portraits, including those of the Beardsleys and by 1984, sixteen portraits were attributed to the same hand. At this time, Colleen Heslip and Helen Kellogg published an article asserting that pastellist Sarah Perkins (1771-1831) was the author of these remarkable paintings. While their arguments were based on both stylistic and circumstantial evidence, Perkins’ likenesses are all pastels whereas the Beardsley Limner is only known to have worked in oil.

For this reason, and in addition to some debate on stylistic similarities, the Perkins attribution is not generally accepted by the institutions that own these works, including Yale University Art Gallery, Colonial Williamsburg and the National Gallery of Art.