Sturtevant J. Hamblen

Sturtevant J. Hamblin (or Hamblen) worked with his brother-in-law, portrait painter William Matthew Prior, painting portraits in the flat, simplified manner of many self-trained, itinerant artists working in New England in the first half of the nineteenth century. Hamblen was the youngest of four artist brothers from a line of New England artisans: their grandfather and father were both painters. In 1828, with the marriage of their sister Rosamond to Prior, the brothers began working with him. They did portraits as well as decorative painting, but Sturtevant was the only one of the Hamblen brothers to advertise himself specifically as a portrait painter. He appears to have trained as Prior’s assistant or apprentice and then to have worked as his junior partner.

The Prior-Hamblen family lived in Portland, Maine, in the 1830s, moving to Boston in 1841. Sturtevant worked with Prior on such portraits as the Terra Foundation’s Young Boy Holding Bow and Arrow with a Drum on the Floor (TF 1992.123), on which he may have assisted with accessories and background while Prior handled the more challenging body and face of the figure. Other portraits have been attributed solely to Sturtevant, although his style is difficult to distinguish from that of his better-known brother-in-law. In the late 1840s, the spread of inexpensive portraits made by new photographic techniques undermined the market for portrait painters such as the Prior-Hamblen brothers. While Prior responded by branching into other kinds of painting, such as landscape, Sturtevant abandoned painting by 1856 to join his brother Joseph in the haberdashery business.