William H. Kennedy was born in New Hampshire and worked as a portrait painter in New Bedford, Massachusetts; Ledyard, Connecticut; and Berwick, Maine from 1845 through 1847. He moved to Maryland in 1849 or 1850, living at various locations in Baltimore with his wife and three children until 1869.

Kennedy is generally regarded as one of the folk painters of the Prior-Hamblin School, named for brothers-in-law William Matthew Prior (1806-1873) and Sturtevant J. Hamblen (active 1837-1856). No direct link to these artists has yet been found, although Kennedy worked in Massachusetts at the same time Prior and Hamblen did, and lived a few doors away from Prior in Baltimore in the late 1850s.

Stylistically, Kennedy's crisp, flat liken...