Paintings American Women 1730s

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1730 John Smibert (1688-1751). Possibly Hester Stanton Plaisted Gooch.
1730 Gansevoort Limner possibly Pieter Vanderlyn. Susanna Truax.

1730 Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778). Catarina De Wandelaer Gansevoort (1689-1767.)

1730 Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778) Girl of the Van Rensselaer Family.

1730-40s Unknown Artist Catalynje Post.

1730s Gerardus Duyckinck (1695-1746.) Elizabeth van Braugh.

1730s Gerardus Duyckinck (1695-1746 ). Catherine Williams (Mrs. Elias Boudinot III).

1732 Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778). Young Lady with a Rose.
1732 John Smibert (1688-1751). Hannah Gardiner (Mrs. James Mac Sparran.)
1732 John Smibert (1688-1751). Jane Clark (Mrs. Ezekiel Lewis).
1734 John Smibert (1688-1751). Judith Colman (Mrs. Thomas Bulfinch).
1734 John Smibert (1688-1751). Hannah Pemberton (Mrs. Benjamin Coleman)

1734 John Smibert (1688-1751). Mary Pemberton (1717-1763).

1735 Gerardus Duyckinck (1695-1746). Richa Franks.

1735-45 John Smibert (1688-1751). Portrait of a Woman.
1735 Gerardus Duyckinck (1695-1746). Abigaill Levy Franks.

1737 Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778). Young Lady With a Fan.
1739 Portrait of Deborah Glen.

1739 Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778). Catherine Ogden.
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Painters & Society Look At Older Women

. 1730-40 Artist: John Smibert 1688-1751. Subject: Sarah Middlecott 1678-1764 (Mrs. Louis Boucher). Henry Francis duPont Winterthur Museum. Mr. Louis Boucher, who had been born in France, was lost at sea in 1715. They had been married in 1702, in Boston by Cotton Mather.
1735 Artist: Gansevoort Limner, possibly Pieter Vanderlyn 1687-1778. Subject: Miss Van Alen. National Gallery of Art.

Subject: Annis Boudinot Stockton (Mrs. Richard Stockton) 1715 - 1746 Artist: Attributed to Gerardus Duyckinck 1695 - ca. 1746. Princeton University Art Museum.

I am interested in early 18th-century images of women in the British-American colonies who are wearing black or very darkly colored dresses, because they are relatively rare during this period. Did the dark clothing symbolize an event in the wearer's life or her situation? There are certainly more portraits by the end of the century, with several depicting older women in somber clothing. Is this mourning dress?

We know that by the 2nd quarter of the 18th century, colonists in British America were experiencing a full-blown consumer revolution. The gentry were building bigger houses & filling them with imported goods -- textiles, furniture, & tablewares. Colonists were displaying these new acquisitions to project an appearance of refinement & gentility akin to that in England. Women became more aware of fashion & their appearance.

In the middle of the 18th century, there was some concern about the loss of beauty as a woman grew older. Two poems published in the 1740s, warned young women, that they must develop their minds.

"The True Beauty" from American Magazine. September, 1744.

Tell me not of faces fair,
Coral lips, or jetty hair;
Rosy cheeks, and dimpled chin,
Fit to tempt a saint to sin;
Sparkling eyes, and snowy breasts;
Beauties by thy nymph possess.
Fairest faces will decay;
Jetty tresses soon turn grey;
Rosy cheeks must lose their dye;
Dimness seize the sparkling eye:
All that now is sweet, and fair,
Time will wrinkle and impair.

"To a Lady with a Withered Rose" from American Magazine. June 1745.
How transient is the fairest face! Soft beauty’s gayest charms
How vain! This rose, dear Cloe, lately shone
The brightest glory of the plain:
It blossom’d like the ruddy morn,
All pregnant with ethereal dew,
Diffus’d ambrosial sweets around,
And blush’d almost as bright as you.
Alas! How chang’d its damask pride!
Ah! Where is now that soft perfume?
That glow that swell’d the arched leaf,
The orient dye, the fragrant bloom?
All shrivel’d, faded, and decay’d,
Now drooping low its pallid head,
No longer grateful to the sense,
All its bright glories now are fled.
Tis thus, dear Cloe, thus thy charms,
Now shining like the new-born day
Each splendid blooming grace shall lose,
And like this wither’d rose decay.
That snowy skin, those killing eyes,
Must perish with the circling years;
Old age with hoary hairs comes on,
And every beauty disappears.
Learn then with charms to deck thy mind,
Those graces that can n’er decay,
Nor feel the wasteful hand of time,
The beauties of the mind alone,
Still verdant in eternal bloom,
No baneful change of Season know,
Nor with the frost of age consume.
But in immortal youth shall live,
When all that gay attracting form,
Which wond’ring mortals now admireShall nourish the devouring worm.

Nearly 50 years later, a similar essay aimed at older women trying to look and act like their younger counterparts, "Search After an Old Man" appeared in The Lady’s Magazine and Repository of Entertaining Knowledge published in Philadelphia, in 1792.

The time…is past when nature has attractions for love; and wisdom and discretion ought to supply the place of personal Beauty. They ought to be counsellors to the young, and not imitators of folly; they ought now to use that experience which they have acquired, to teach the young to avoid the errors into which themselves may have fallen, by an overweening attention to external ornament, and being more desirous to catch men, than to attract minds.
This view that women should be high-minded & virtuous heightened after the Revolution. In the new Republic, many believed that natural feminine virtues of humility & sensibility made women more religious & thereby, the perfect guardians for the nation's moral integrity.

It soon became expected that American women would instill traditional values in their children while protecting them in a refuge removed from the temptations of the outside world. American men would use their rational minds to make farms & businesses & government flourish. Little girls would be taught the domestic arts; little boys would be taught classical critical thinking.

Old women, who no longer had young children & could offer little help with household chores, were expected to be the ultimate repositories of these conservative feminine virtues & to convince daughters & grandaughters of their home-based usefulness to their new nation.

1771-76 Henry Benbridge (1743-1812). Mrs Benjamin Simons. Metropolitan Museum of Art
1790 Ralph Earl (1751-1801). Mrs Nathaniel Taylor. Newark Museum.1791 Ralph Earl (1751-1801). Mrs. John Watson. Munson-Williams-Proctor Institute of Art.
1792 Ralph Earl (1751-1801). Mrs. Richard Alsop. National Museum of American Art.
1796 Ralph Earl (1751-1801). Sarah Bostwick (Mrs. Sherman Boardman) New Milford Historical Society, Connecticut.

1798 Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827). Anna de Peyster. San Antonio Museum of Art..

Paintings John Hesselius

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In Philadelphia, Swedish painter Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755) had a son John in 1728, who lived and worked in Pennsylvania, Maryland, & Virginia for 50 years. Gustavus taught his son John Hesselius (1728-1778) to paint; but their styles were different, & his more colorful son was quite successful securing commissions to paint flattering portraits of gentry women & their children.1760 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Mrs. Richard Brown
In addition to the instruction from his father, John Hesselius probably was influenced by the work of the elegant Robert Feke (1707-1751) in Philadelphia as well. Later John moved to Maryland, where he came in contact with the rococo work of Englishman John Wollaston (1710-1775), who seemed to have an additional affect on his painting style.
1760s John Hesselius (1728-1778). Jean Dick (Mrs. Anthony Stewart)
When John Hesselius turned 35 in 1763, he courted & married a well-to-do, young widow, Mary Woodward, daughter of wealthy Colonel Richard Young, in Annapolis, Maryland. He spent the remaining years of his life as a leisurely country gentleman on her estate "Bellefield," meeting the local gentry a& gaining many lucrative commissions in both Maryland and Virginia. In Annapolis, he also met & became Charles Willson Peale's (1741-1827) first painting instructor. Charles Willson Peale would have no trouble attracting women to sit for his portraits.

1750 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Millicent Conway Gordon.

1757 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Mrs. Matthew Tiglman Anna Lloyd & dau Anna Maria.
1760 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Mrs. William Carmichael.
1760 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Anna Dorthea Finney 1735-1817.
1760 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Mrs Middleton.
1762 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Elizabeth Chew Smith

1763 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Rebecca Holdsworth and grandaughter Rebecca Woodward.

1764 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Ann Bond (Mrs. Edward Fell).

1764 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Elizabeth Galloway (Mrs Thomas Sprigg).

1764 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Mrs. Richard Galloway.

1765 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Margaret Tilghman Carroll Mrs Charles Carroll the Barrister.

1765 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Sarah Taliaferro (Mrs. William Dainerfield).

1770 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Susannah Rose (Mrs. Gavin Lawson)
1771 John Hesselius (1728-1778). Ann Fitzhugh Rose..

Paintings Gustavus Hesselius

.There seem to be few portraits of women before 1730 from the Pennsylvania and Maryland area. Maryland did have Justus Engelhardt Kuhn, who flourished there from 1707 to 1717, but painted mostly the children of the gentry with fantastic formal European gardens as background. Some have suggested that these settings allude to their Catholic faith.
1712-14 Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755). Christina Stalcop.
But Philadelphia had an artist in residence from about 1713 to mid-century. Swede Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755) moved from Wilmington, Delaware, where his brother Andreas was minister at the Old Swedes Church, to Philadelphia after immigrating in 1711. He spent a few years in Prince George's County, Maryland, but then returned to Philadelphia, where he lived until he died.
1717 Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755). Mary Darnall (1678-1742) Mrs. Charles Carroll (1660-1720).
There, the very traditional baroque portrait painter advertised that he could paint, "Coats of Arms ...Ornaments, Landskips, Signs...Ship and House Painting, Gilding..." and even clean and repair old paintings.
Gentlemen living in Philadelphia did not mind his dark palette & stiff style, which somehow fit into the somber & plain facade of their Quaker influenced society. Pennsylvania men sat to have their portraits rendered by Hesselius. But women felt differently.
1742 Gustavus Hesselius (1672-1755) Mrs. Gustavus Brown
Philadelphia Quaker James Logan wrote to his brother in England who desired paintings of Logan's Pennsylvania family, "We have a Swedish painter here, no bad hand, who generally does Justice to the men...but is remarked for never having done any to ye fair sex, and therefore very few care to sit to him nothing on earth could prevail with my spouse to sit at all...".

Paintings American Women 1720s

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1720 Nehemiah Partridge (1683-1737). Wyntje Lavinia Van Vechten.

1720 Nehemiah Partridge (1683-1737) Catryna Van Rensselaur Ten Broeck.
1720 Perhaps Pieter Vanderlyn (1687-1778). Portrait of a Lady (possibly-Hannah Stillman).

1721 Schuyler Limner possibly Nehemiah Partridge (1683-1737.) Maria Van Alen (Mrs. Thomas Van Alstyne.)

1722 Nehemiah Partridge (1683-1737) Ariaantja Coeymans Verplank (1672-1743) Mrs David Verplank.
1723 Gerardus Duyckinck (1695-1746) Elsje Rutgers (Mrs. David Schuyler, Mrs. Domine Vas).

1725 Henrietta Johnston (1674-1729) Frances Moore Bayard
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2 references from 1841 dictionary

Salopia antiqua: or, An enquiry from personal survey into the 'druidical,' military, and other early remains in Shropshire and the north Welsh borders; with observations upon the names of places, and a glossary of words used in the county of Salop (Google eBook) written by the Rev. Charles Henry Hartshorne printed at the University Press, Cambridge. London: John W. Parker, West Strand. 1841.

WHIPPET, s. a dog bred betwixt a greyhound and a spaniel.

NAGG, v. to bite at, snap. Ex. "Jim's whippet nagged at my heels."

Early American Spy Lydia Barrington Darragh

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It is said that on the night of December 2, 1777, Irish-born Philadelphia nurse Lydia Barrington Darragh (1729-1789) potentially saved lives for General George Washington's Continental Army, when she overheard the British planning a surprise attack on Washington's army for the following days.

On Second Street in Philadelphia, directly opposite the headquarters of Sir William Howe, the British commander, lived a Quaker couple, William & Lydia Darrah. Howe’s adjutant general took over part of the Darrah home for his quarters. On December 2, 1777, he advised Lydia to send all her family to bed early, apparently in anticipation of a meeting to be held at their home. At this time, Philadelphia was occupied by the British.

When Howe's headquarters proved too small to hold meetings, he often commandeered a large upstairs room in the Darraghs' house. Although uncorroborated by contemporary written evidence, family oral history relates that Mrs. Darragh regularly would eavesdrop & take notes on the British meetings from an adjoining room & would conceal the notes by sewing them into her coat before passing them onto American troops stationed outside the city.

On the evening of December 2, 1777, Darragh overheard the British commanders planning a surprise attack on Washington's army at Whitemarsh, Pennsylvania, for December 4 & 5.

The morning after the British meeting in her home, determined to get word to the patriots, 48-year-old Lydia crossed the street to Howe’s headquarters & requested a pass to go to a miller at Frankfort to obtain flour. With the pass, she went through the British lines, left her bag to be filled at the mill, and then hurried northward, and delivered her warning.

Lydia then returned to the mill, paid for her bag of flour, and re-entered the city, unsuspected. The forewarned Washington intensified his patrols. She never made the story public during her lifetime, & her daughter told people about her heroism after her death.

The British did march towards Whitemarsh on the evening of December 4, 1777, & were surprised to find General Washington & the Continental Army waiting for them. After three inconclusive days of skirmishing, General Howe chose to return his troops to the relative safety of Philadelphia.
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