Erastus salisbury field biography sampler

Erastus Salisbury Field
American
(Leverett, Massachusetts, 1805 - 1900, Sunderland, Massachusetts)

Erastus Salisbury Field’s career spanned nearly seven decades and approximately four hundred paintings have been attributed to him. He was an itinerant painter, meaning that he traveled from town to town, serving mostly wealthy rural patrons. The details of Field’s career are sketchy at best, and because he was an itinerant painter, it is difficult to determine exactly where the artist painted when. However, scholars do know he traveled and painted in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York State.

Field was born in May 1805 in Leverett, Massachusetts. He had a twin sister Salome—the twins were two of nine children. When he was a child, Field sketched portraits of his relatives, and his parents encouraged the young artist by providing him with paints and scraps of board with which to experiment. Field began painting professionally in the early to mid-1820s, and in 1824, Erastus salisbury field biography.