Woman with Gold Necklace

Woman with Gold Necklace combines the Prior-Hamblin School’s enthusiasm for portraiture, ornamental painting, and landscape scenery. Aside from a lively business in portraiture, William Matthew Prior painted several landscape scenes, which he referred to as “fancy pieces,” a term used in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century to describe a variety of arts such as decorative painting, knitting, and quilting. His advertisements boasted that he worked “in a very tasty style.” (Vlach, Plain Painters: Making Sense of American Folk Art, 1988)