Victorian America cherished the idea of the nuclear family. Roles were clearly defined, and the sanctum in which the players performed was the home. In this imposing family portrait attributed to Deacon Robert Peckham, the five children of John Thurston and Mersylvia Farwell form a tight group. Each holds a prop appropriate to age and gender–flower, doll, cat–except John Albro, who holds onto the handlebar of the wicker carriage. Baby Mary Jane sits in the carriage at the center of the composition, fingering a locket around her neck, her siblings forming a constellation around her. This may indicate an impetus for the painting commission, as the infant died in 1841, the year this portrait was made. Postmortem portraiture was not uncommon in the nineteenth century, especially as a means to preserve the wholeness of the family unit.

Peckham's long career as an artist spanned from 1809, when he is known to have studied briefly with Ethan Allen Greenwood, through 1850, though his most prolific period was during the 1830s and 1840s, when he painted primarily in Worcester, Massachusetts. It is not known if Peckham knew the Farwell family, but both he and John Thurston Farwell were deacons of the Congregational Church: Farwell in Fitchburg, where the portrait was painted in his home on Mechanic Street, and Peckham in nearby Westminster, where he served as deacon of the First Congregational Church for fourteen years, beginning in 1828. Peckham's time with Greenwood, the growing influence of photography, and his long years of practice by the time this portrait was painted may account for the competent realism of his depictions, especially of children, and his ability to show spatial relationships.

Peckham was a man concerned with moral and social issues. His home–which he occupied with his first wife, their nine children, and later his second wife–still stands and was a meeting place for the local temperance organization and a station on the Underground Railroad. His outspoken sentiments eventually resulted in his estrangement from his church. He resigned his position in 1842 and was excommunicated by 1850. Peckham and his family moved to Worcester, but in 1862, after Congress passed the Emancipation Proclamation, he returned to Westminster, where he was reinstated in the church.

Stacy C. Hollander, "The Farwell Children," in American Radiance: The Ralph Esmerian Gift to the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 406.