John Stevens (?)

c. 1749-1752

John Wollaston

Painter, American, active c. 1742 - 1775

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    oil on canvas

  • Credit Line

    Andrew W. Mellon Collection

  • Dimensions

    overall: 76.5 x 63.6 cm (30 1/8 x 25 1/16 in.)
    framed: 90.2 x 76.2 x 7.9 cm (35 1/2 x 30 x 3 1/8 in.)

  • Accession

    1947.17.103

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

(C.K. Johnson, Greenwich, Connecticut); sold 15 October 1925 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[1] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1947 to NGA.
[1] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Paintings by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, (Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928) annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). Two letters from C.K. Johnson to Clarke, 5 October 1925 and 12 October 1925, offer the portrait without an attribution to Wollaston (NGA curatorial file).

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1925

  • A Loan Exhibition of the Earliest Known Portraits of Americans Painted in This Country by Painters of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, The Century Association, New York, 1925, no. 15.

1928

  • Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue, as John Stevens.

Bibliography

1928

  • Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke. Exh. cat. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, unnumbered.

  • Barker, Virgil. "Portraiture in America Before 1876." The Arts 13, no. 5 (May 1928): repro. 276.

1931

  • Bolton, Theodore, and Harry Lorin Binsse. "Wollaston, An Early American Portrait Manufacturer" The Antiquarian 16 (June 1931): 52.

1932

  • Sherman 1932, 37.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 124, repro.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 261, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 383, repro.

1995

  • Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 360-362, repro. 361.

Wikidata ID

Q20177985

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