A curious folk art baseball painting and its sources (?)

[dbrown]

A painting coming up at auction caught my eye recently -- at an upstate NY auction house.



Auction link: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item...seball-subject

(That lot has 75 watchers -- I'm not outing a secret.)

At first I was amazed, and then I got skeptical -- "too good to be true" usually is. The stretchers don't much age to them, and the painting seems a combo of turn of the century (the background) and later (the blackface players).

So I did a little google image searching, and found a few things.

First, the same painting was sold four years ago, which tells us nothing about the painting but is interesting nonetheless: https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item...baseball-playe

More interesting was finding two different paintings that appear to be "source material" --
What appears to be an actually old (i.e., late 19th century/early 20th) canvas, but with white players and the same building in the background:
https://www.rafaelosonaauction.com/a...baseball-game/


And, another seemingly older canvas that echoes the one at auction now, but without the background:
https://www.liveauctioneers.com/item...ing-of-a-black


That's all I've found. It's all a bit baffling -- the painting at auction now is clearly influenced by both of these paintings, but they could never (?) have all been in the same place. Are these images reproduced elsewhere? Is there another source image from the 19th century that all are descended from?

If anyone has more info on these or related paintings, I'd love to hear about it.

Thanks & happy holidays,

David