ROBERT WALTER WEIR
A Child's Prayer.

Oil on panel, circa 1840. 510x400 mm; 20x15¾ inches. Signed in oil, lower left recto.

Provenance: Kennedy Galleries, Inc., New York, with the label; private collection, Massachusetts.

Weir (1803-1889) was an American artist and educator and is considered among the painters of the Hudson River School. He was elected to the National Academy of Design in 1829 and was an instructor at the United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. Among his notable students at West Point was James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903). Weir's best-known work is the Embarkation of the Pilgrims in the United States Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C. He was also the father of the American painter Julian Alden Weir (1852-1919), one of the founders of the Society of American Artists in 1877, a member of the National Academy of Design (1886) and one of the group of Ten American Painters, New York.