The American colonists were barely ashore before they began casting about for ways to make their new homes attractive. In Puritan New England, crude portraits were being limned by anonymous painters as early as 1641; in Pennsylvania, settlers from the Palatinate were soon decorating birth certificates and family records with elaborate Fraktur flowers and birds, a practice derived from Gothic manuscripts.
Occasionally a craftsman of exceptional talenta Matthew Pratt or Charles Willson Pealewould take up painting as a career. But producing folk art remained largely a part-time occupation of the village...
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