William Matthew Prior is best known for a reductive approach to portraiture that he accommodated to the finances of his clients through a sliding price scale. Prior had the proven ability to paint formal, academic portraits for those who had the means and desire, or the spontaneous and gestural portraits for which he is most admired and recognized today. Prior married into a prominent artisan family, the Hamblins. He had a strong influence on the painting style of his brother-in-law Sturtevant J. Hamblin (1817–1884), constituting what is loosely known as the "Prior-Hamblin School." Around 1840, he moved with family members to East Boston, where he established a painting garret.

Prior was a man of strong beliefs, an ardent Millerite, a proponent of abolition, and, with the advent of the spiritualist movement after 1848, a believer in the ability to make meaningful contact with the deceased. Prior was no stranger to death, having lost his first wife and six of their children. About 1850, he began to paint portraits from "spirit effect," including his own brother, Barker, who had perished at sea in 1815 and was memorialized by their sister Jane, in an artwork on view in this exhibition. There was already a strongly established tradition of posthumous portraiture painted from corpse or memory, but Prior promised a true likeness of loved ones painted from the actual spirit of the deceased. This portrait uses the trope of heavenly clouds that was popular in portraits of deceased children. Such references helped grieving parents to be strong in their belief that their innocent child’s death earned a reward in the world to come as their spirits have been accepted into the kingdom of heaven.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Heavenly Children, c. 1850" exhibition copy for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection. Stacy C. Hollander, curator. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020.