Speaking of David Rankin Barbee.....

[Pamela]

Bummer! Is there any chance that he was the artist? I just read about Bates in Wikipedia and it's a lot of crazy and no mention of art. Maybe he commissioned the painting, it seems he could afford to, but you'd think he would have photographed it hanging on a wall in a room. It seems fairly well done in a colonial primitive style, although colonial days were long gone when it was painted. I like that the boarding house is in the background. I don't know art history, though. I just looked at it again and there appears to be a signature in the bottom left corner. Maybe it's legible in person. It's so tacky that Bates put his copyright where he did on the print, and so large.