Henry Folsom
The New England folk artist Henry Folsom’s life dates are given variously as 1792 to 1814 or circa 1805 to 1825. The noted twentieth century collector and scholar Nina Fletcher Little used the 1792 to 1814 dates.
Henry was the son of James and Sarah Gilman Folsom. He was born in Exeter, New Hampshire and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy with the class of 1804. He went to Boston to study art and died at the age of 22 in 1814. The Genealogy of the Folsom Family by E. K. Folsom, published 1938, mentions portraits of father, grandfather and grandmother which “show great talent.”
A group of five portraits of Folsom family members, including p4A lot D9932441, are illustrated in Antiques at Auction by Norman Hudson, pages 345 to 247. The portrait in p4A lot D9932441 was also illustrated in Childs Gallery 1975 brochure “Non-Academic American Art.” A portrait believed to be the artist’s sister Anna Gilman Folsom (1797 to 1868) was given to the American Folk Art Museum by Ralph Esmerian and is illustrated in American Radiance, page 29 and discussed on pages 377 and 378. (This was lot 393 in the 1994 Sotheby’s sale.) Nina Fletcher Little’s Early Years of the McLean Hospictal, Recorded in the Journal of George William Folsom, Apothecary at the Asylum in Charlestown illustrates and discusses three Folsom portraits on pages 8 to 12.