Paintings

Two for One

  • The Beck Children

    The Beck Children
  • Woman in Orange Vest

    Woman in Orange Vest

When a painting of two children arrived from Maine to be examined and cleaned, I suspected that the canvas I was looking at on the back was not the same canvas seen then on the front. I called the owner and asked permission to remove the portrait from the stretcher. Underneath the top picture appeared this astonishingly compelling, unfinished portrait of a young woman. It caught the attention, admiration, and curiosity of nearly every visitor to our studio for the next several weeks. A search for the name Howard C. Renwick at an online art dictionary revealed that the artist had a flourishing career as a painter of seductively attractive young women and was known as a calendar artist. Possibly to protect the good family name and his own professional identity, he signed his lovely ladies with the suspicious and unlikely pseudonym "Hayden C. Hayden."

The owner is certain that the painting of the woman on the right is not the mother of the children seen on the left. The reason the model did not pose long enough for the artist to complete the portrait is perhaps best left as a private matter, and she now hangs in the same room with the painting of the children.

Persons with knowledge or information concerning this handsome young woman last seen wearing an orange vest sometime in the late 1920s may contact our Boston office in strictest confidence. The subject is thought to be strong-willed and intelligent.