Woman with a Green Book (Louisa Gallond Cook)

Erastus Salisbury Field · 1838

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

88.9 × 74.3 cm (35 × 29 1/4 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Painted in 1838 with quiet authority, Erastus Salisbury Field's portrait of Louisa Gallond Cook captures the composed dignity of a New England woman at a moment when American portraiture was finding its own identity apart from European tradition. Field trained briefly under Samuel F. B. Morse before establishing himself as an itinerant portraitist across rural Massachusetts and Connecticut. His work sits at the intersection of folk art and formal portraiture — technically self-taught in many respects, yet possessed of a sharp eye for likeness, texture, and the social weight of a well-chosen prop. The green book Louisa holds is not incidental; literacy and learning carried real status among the New England middle class, and Field understood how to encode that meaning into a composition. Field went on to paint one of the most ambitious works in American folk art, the monumental *Historical Monument of the American Republic*, though he remained largely unrecognised in his own lifetime and was only rediscovered by scholars decades after his death. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made to the dimensions of the original canvas, using the same medium Field worked in, so the warmth of the flesh tones, the subtle sheen of the fabric, and the quiet presence of the sitter translate faithfully from the Art Institute of Chicago to your wall.