Joseph H. Davis (painter)

[3] The 1926 donation of a signed portrait by an individual donor to the New Hampshire Historical Society led to speculation as to whether he was the Joseph H. Davis of Farmington or Dover, or if he was from Maine instead.

[4] Although his identity remained uncertain for almost another half century, his work was featured in a major exhibition in 1974 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Historians have been able to reconstruct his movements during his brief career as an itinerant artist because of the calligraphic inscriptions Davis would include at the foot of his pictures, usually giving the name and age of his sitters.

[5][1] In this way, Art Historians Arthur and Sybil Kern connected the artist as a local farmer known as "Pine Hill Joe" of Limington, Maine.

[9] Art historians have been able to reconstruct his movements during his brief career as an itinerant artist because of the calligraphic inscriptions Davis would include at the foot of his pictures, usually giving the name and age of his sitters.

He painted portraits in watercolor, with the faces of his sitters depicted in strict profile while their bodies usually open outward to a three-quarter view.

[4] A burgeoning manufacture economy and flourishing middle class contributed to both Davis’s success as an itinerant painter and the quality of goods portrayed in his works.