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Mather Brown

Thomas Dawson, Viscount Cremorne, c. 1788

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 75.2 x 63.3 cm (29 5/8 x 24 15/16 in.)

framed: 88.9 x 76.8 x 3.5 cm (35 x 30 1/4 x 1 3/8 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.28

Artists / Makers

Mather Brown (painter) American, 1761 - 1831

Image Use

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Inscription

lower right, in red: M. Brown.

Provenance

Possibly owned by the sitter's widow, Philadelphia Hannah Freame, Viscountess Cremorne [1740/1741-1826], London[1] and left to her principal heir, Granville Penn [1761-1844], Pennsylvania Castle, Isle of Portland, Dorset, England.[2] Bought with the contents of Pennsylvania Castle by J. Meyrick Head, 1887; sold in his sale (Christie, Manson and Woods, London, 10 July 1916, no. 159); purchased by "Martin";[3] (Robinson & Farr, Philadelphia, 1916); sold 12 February 1917 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[4] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1947 to NGA.

[1] She was the granddaughter of William Penn; see Genealogies of Pennsylvania Families from the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine, 2 (Baltimore, 1982): 564-565.

[2] Pennsylvania Castle was built by Viscountess Cremorne's cousin John Penn (1760-1834) after he became governor of the Isle of Portland in 1805. He left it to his brother Granville Penn; see Genealogies of Pennsylvania Families from the Pennsylvania Genealogical Magazine 2: 568-569, 625-626, and Nicholas B. Wainwright, "The Penn Collection," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 87, no. 4 (October 1963): 393-419. The last family owner of the castle and its contents was Stewart Forbes, a cousin.

[3] Catalogue of Family Portraits, Books, Autographs, Manuscripts, etc. Relating to William Penn and His Descendants and the Early History of Pennsylvania: The Property of J. Meyrick Head, Esq. Deceased; Late of Pennsylvania Castle, Portland (London, 1916), 30, as by Mather Brown. The buyer, noted as "Martin" in the copy of the catalogue at the Getty Library, Los Angeles, may be Sir Alec Martin of Christie's, according to the staff of the Getty Provenance Index. Charles Henry Hart, in a letter of 26 February 1917 to Thomas B. Clarke, identified Martin as "one of the Christie's and often buys pictures that he puts into Farr's hands for sale" (in NGA curatorial files).

[4] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are according to a 1928 Clarke exhibition catalogue in the NGA Library that is annotated with information from the files of M. Knoedler & Co., New York (copy in NGA curatorial files). A letter from Robinson & Farr, Philadelphia, dated 21 February 1917, to Thomas B. Clarke says that the firm owned the painting with "an Englishman" and that they purchased the painting in London in the summer of 1916 (in NGA curatorial files).

Associated Names

Christie, Manson & Woods, Ltd.
Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Cremorne, Philadelphia Hannah Freame Dawson, Viscountess
Head, Esq., J. Meyrick
Knoedler & Company, M.
Martin, Alec, Sir
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Penn, Granville
Robinson & Farr

Exhibition History

1922: Portraits Painted in Europe by Early American Artists, The Union League Club, New York, January 1922, no. 13.

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 Thomas Dawson.

1949: Exhibition of Early American Portraits on Loan from the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., Pack Memorial Public Library, Asheville, North Carolina, 1949, no. 8, as Thomas Dawson.

1955: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1955.

1956: American Paintings from the Collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., 1956.

Bibliography

1917: Hart, Charles Henry. "Portrait of Thomas Dawson, Viscount Cremorne, Painted by Mather Brown." Art in America 5, no. 6 (October 1917): 309-314.

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.

1952: Rutledge and Lane 1952, 62A.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 18, repro.

1972: Evans, Dorinda. "Mather Brown (1761-1831): A Critical Study." Ph.D. dissertation, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, London, 1972: 78, 90-92, 100, 213, no. 43.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 30, repro.

1982: Evans, Dorinda. Mather Brown: Early American Artist in England. Middletown, Connecticut, 1982: 78-79, repro. 80, 203.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 35, 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: 17-20, color repro. 18.