Day 277 - John Smibert portrait of Francis Brinley

December 20, 2021

Gallery 747 focuses primarily on colonial portraiture but also includes a mahogany high cabinet and card table and some silver objects, including a porringer made by Paul Revere. An introductory placard explains that commissioning portraits and purchasing luxury objects were ways in which wealthy people made their status manifest - an obvious point, perhaps, but a useful reminder nonetheless. 

I've never heard of most of the portraitists whose works are on display, including John Smibert, Joseph Blackburn, John Wollaston, James Badger, and Peter Vanderlyn. Several of them were born in Britain and, I suppose, came to the colonies to seek their fortunes; a couple were self-taught, and it shows in the rather awkward proportions of the portraits' subjects and the plain backgrounds against which these subjects are set.  One interesting figure is Prince Demah, born Demah Barnes, an enslaved man who, when his Loyalist owner fled to England, declared himself to be free, gave up his slave name, and conferred a royal title on himself. I do, of course, recognize John Singleton Copley's name, and his two paintings in the gallery immediately stand out for their quality and refinement. There's a reason he's better known!

Today's work is an oil portrait of Francis Brinley, a wealthy Boston landowner, by John Smibert (1688-1751), who was born in Scotland, came to America in 1728, and is regarded as the first academically trained painter to work in British America. The painting, which measures roughly 48 inches high and 42 inches wide, was executed in 1729, when Brinley was 41; a companion painting done the same year shows Brinley's wife and young son. Both paintings reflect Smibert's exposure to the art of the Italian Renaissance: Mrs. Brinley and her child resemble a Madonna and bambino, while Brinley is positioned in front of a a landscape.  He looks portly, self-satisfied, and well cared-for: his double chin rises above a snowy, finely pleated shirt, and his powdered hair cascades in curls to his shoulders (or is it a wig?).  In the background,  fields  - presumably his own - extend down to a river (the Charles?), and Beacon Hill, topped by two steeples, rises in the distance. I never thought of Boston as so hilly, but I suppose it is.

What strikes me is that the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established only a century before this painting was made, but already there were people who were wealthy enough to commission artists to paint their  portraits - evidence that class differences are baked into American history.