It was not until 1993 that the young man in this portrait was determined to be William Lauriston Cook of Petersham, Massachusetts, whose mother and two aunts were painted by Erastus Salisbury Field between 1838 and 1839. William was the son of Clarissa Gallond Cook and the nephew of Louisa Ellen Gallond Cook and Almira Gallond Moore. Clarissa and Louisa had married two brothers–William and Nathaniel Cook, sons of ship captain Samuel Cook. The portraits of William, Clarissa, and Louisa all share a waterfront view of brick and granite warehouses seen in the distance. William is seated in a rosewood grain-painted chair, with one seemingly disembodied hand draped over the back in a pose that Field relied upon throughout the 1830s. He is dressed in a somber black suit that disappears into the dark background. One shoulder is delineated against a gray column, and his face is thrust into light as it emerges from his white shirtfront, with a deep sweep of red curtain behind.

The harbor view in William's portrait takes a slightly different vantage point than appears in either his mother's or his aunt's paintings. The tree that frames the right side of Clarissa's and Louisa's portraits appears just behind William's head, changing the perspective from a deeper view of warehouses and buildings in the women's portraits to the mostly water view in William's. At the time this portrait was painted, Field was charging $4.00 for a half-length portrait, which he could complete in one day. In her portrait, Clarissa wears a dress and collar that is similar to her sister's, but the collar is clasped with a mourning pin. This may be a reference to Louisa's death in 1838, probably shortly after her own portrait was painted. Field painted the third sister, Almira, around 1839, in a family portrait that includes Louisa's two children flanking their aunt as she sits in her comfortable home with her husband, Joseph Moore, and their own two children, who stand on either side of their father. Mrs. Moore is dressed identically, even in the same jewels as her sister Louisa was in her portrait.

Stacy C. Hollander, "Portrait of a Young Man (Probably William Lauriston Cook)," 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), 398.