Helen Hill Kellogg died peacefully on November 4 at her home in Essex, New York, overlooking Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains of Vermont. She was surrounded by the early American folk portraits that she loved, and her two eccentric cats and her devoted husband of 52 years, Steven, were at her side. She was 89 years old.

For most of their married lives, Helen and Steven lived in an eighteenth century farmhouse above a waterfall on Bennett’s Bridge Road in Sandy, Hook. The simple and expressive architectural details of the early house inspired them to begin furnishing the rooms with pieces that were in harmony with those details. They spent hundreds of hours visiting antique shops, auctions, and shows throughout New England. They particularly enjoyed meeting, learning from, and befriending the dealers and fellow collectors they encountered in their travels. As they developed their aesthetic judgement and became more discerning, they continually upgraded their collection, which contained fine examples of Windsor chairs, painted furniture, and American folk portraits.

Helen was intrigued by the fact there were mysteries surrounding the identities of many of the early American folk painters. Her curiosity about these gifted artists prompted her to launch a quest to discover the names and backgrounds of two of the most well-known, whose work, occasionally signed “Shute,” with accompanying initials, or unsigned and tentatively identified stylistically, could be found in many museums and private collections. Helen initiated a research project that lead her on a circuitous fact-finding odyssey through inventories, town records, family histories, and graveyards. Her imaginative and determined sleuthing eventually cracked the case, and she was able to confirm that the artists were Samuel Addison Shute and Ruth Whittier Shute. They were a young, talented, and courageous couple who had spent their working lives galloping throughout the far flung settlements of early nineteenth century New England and upper New York state in search of portrait commissions. Helen published the news of her discovery in American Folk Painters of Three Centuries, in association with an exhibition at the Whitney Museum of Art, and also in the book, American Radiance, published by the American Folk Art Museum.

In collaboration with Colleen Heslip, Helen built a persuasive case supporting the identification of an unknown artist, who had previously been referred to as the Beardsley Limner, as the Connecticut pastelist, Sarah Perkins. The evidence for this conclusion was published in an article in The Magazine Antiques in September of 1984. Later, in its January 2008 issue, that magazine published a comprehensive overview of Helen’s and Steven’s collection of American folk art that was written by Elizabeth Donaghy Garrett.

Helen is survived by her six children, Dr Pamela Kellogg, Melanie Parkinson Larson, Kimberly Parkinson DeCambre, Laurie Kellogg, Kevin Kellogg, and Colin Kellogg; and by numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren.