Field, Erastus

Field, Erastus (Salisbury)

(1805–1900) painter; born in Leverett, Mass. He was a student of Samuel F. B. Morse (1824), and became an itinerant portrait painter. His naive paintings of children, such as Girl Holding Rattle (c. 1835), are charming. He is most famous for the mystical architectural towers in his last major work, Historical Monument of the American Republic (c. 1876–88).

The Cambridge Dictionary of American Biography, by John S. Bowman. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995. Reproduced with permission.