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Provenance

Caroline Amelia Eastman, granddaughter of the artist, Cambridge, Massachusetts; her sister, Elizabeth Willard Grogan, Cambridge;[1] sold 1919 to Francis Hill Bigelow, Cambridge;[2] (his sale, Anderson Galleries, New York, 17 January 1924, no. 29);[3] Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York; 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.

Exhibition History

1924
Exhibition of the Earliest Known Portraits of Americans by Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, The Union League Club, New York, March 1924, no. 13, as Barnabus Clark.
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 Barnabus Clark.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight, plain-weave \rfabric support remains unlined and on its probably \roriginal four-member, mortise-and-tenon stretcher. \rStenciled on the reverse of the fabric is: "PREPARED \rBY/P. CAFFE/NEW YORK." Two thin ground layers were \rapplied after the fabric was stretched: the lower is \rwhite; the upper is warm red. The latter is visible \rthrough the subsequent thin paint in areas of the coat \rand green background. There is slight impasto in the \rarea of the face. X-radiography indicates that the nose \rand eyes have been reworked several times. The painting\rhas only minor wear and losses, but the inpainting \rin the background has discolored. The yellowed varnish \rhas become somewhat streaky.

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, as Barnabus Clark.
1952
Rutledge and Lane 1952, 116.
1968
Warner, Deborah Jean. Alvan Clark & Sons, Artists in Optics. Washington, 1968: 115.
1970
American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 42, repro., as Barnabus Clark.
1980
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 131, repro., as Barnabus Clark.
1992
American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 142, repro., as Barnabus Clark.
1996
Kelly, Franklin, with Nicolai Cikovsky, Jr., Deborah Chotner, and John Davis. American Paintings of the Nineteenth Century, Part I. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 69-71, repro.

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