Justus Dalee (American 1793-1878), Portrait of a young girl

Justus Dalee (American 1793-1878)Portrait of a young girl, seated three-quarter-length, holding a red bookPen, ink and watercolour11.5 x 9cm (4½ x 3½ in.)Provenance:Austin T. Miller American Antiques, OhioPurchased from the above by the present owner in 2005Justus Dalee was born in Pittstown, Washington County, New York. He was a musician during the Anglo-America war of 1812, but is mostly remembered as an itinerant portrait painter and nearly seventy portraits of children are recorded. He travelled along the east coast primarily in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York State.To be sold without reserve The Pinkers Collection of British, American and European Folk Art This charming collection of folk art takes its name from a diminutive 17th Century cottage on the Kent coast where it has hung and grown in size over the last twenty years. It includes watercolours and oil paintings from the 17th to the early 20th Century. Many are in their original frames and in remarkably fresh condition. Despite its rural location and the provincial subject matter of the works it is a truly international collection and many of the lots have come from some of the most important collectors and dealers in folk art on both sides of the Atlantic including Robert Young, Denzil Grant and Charles Plante in England and David Wheatcroft, Joan Brownstein and Austin Miller in America.Folk Art has been described as 'the unselfconscious creativity of academically untrained artists' (Robert Young, Folk Art, 1999) and it is this quality that gives many of the works an immediacy and playfulness that has chimed with generations of collectors. Some of the pictures, by journeymen artists, artisans or amateurs are provincial reinterpretations of more sophisticated works, such as the early 18th Century Yate family portraits (lot 122). Others have a joyful disregard of accepted ideas of scale, perspective and colouring, giving them a timeless quality which draws parallels with 20th Century artists including Alfred Wallis and John Nash, such as View from La Moinerie (lot 120) and the American School Portrait of a girl (lot 103) has an Outsider Art quality reminiscent of the Art Brut movement founded by Jean Dubuffet. Regardless of their origins this unique and varied collection is the manifestation of the vision and passion of a true collector.