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Accessibility:
Call No:
  • 1891.2.1
Title:
  • Samuel Browne Jr.
Author/Creator:
  • Smibert, John (Artist)
Place of Production/Origin:
Description:
  • Three quarter length portrait of standing figure in wig, green topcoat and vest, and ruffled jabot. His left hand is in his vest and right hand is pointing down. There is a wooded landscape in background.
Date(s):
  • 1734;
Collection Type:
Object Type:
Material(s):
  • paint, oil
  • canvas
Medium(s):
  • Painting
Subjects:
Research Notes:
  • Formerly thought to be a picture of Joseph Wanton.
  • When given to the Society in 1891, the subjects of this portrait and its pendant were identified as Joseph and Mary Wanton. It can now [1974] be safely concluded that the sitters of the portraits in question are Samuel Browne, Jr. and his wife Katherine Winthrop Browne, and that they were painted by John Smibert in 1734, three years following their marraige. Samuel Browne, Jr., was born on April 17, 1708, a son of Colonel Samuel and Abigail Brown of Salem, Massachusetts. He married Katherine Winthrop on March 31, 1731 and died on November 26, 1742, in his thirty-fifth year. Described in Sibley's Harvard Graduates (Vol.VIII) as a "Youth that labours under that bodiely Infirmity...," Samuel Brown, Jr., with his younger brother William (whose full length portrait, painted in April, 1734, is owned by Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore), were ranked number one and number two in the Harvard Class of 1727. Smibert recorded in his Notebook painting twelve portraits for the Browne family of Salem between April, 1734 and August, 1738. The portrait of Samuel Browne, Jr. is listed in the Notebook under the date June, 1734 as: "Samewell Broun Esqr H.P. 1/2 50-0-0." This three-quarter lengthe portrait of a young gentleman in wig attired in an olive green topcoat with ornamental gold frogs and matching weskit unbuttoned to reveal a fuffled jabot, and standing in a wooded landscape with stream and distant mountains, is typical of the aristocratic bearing of Smibert's sitters who came from the wealthy families of New England.
Provenance:
Bibliographic References:
  • Goodyear Jr., Frank H. American Paintings in the Rhode Island Historical Society. Providence, RI: the Rhode Island Historical Society, 1974. Image 2, page 4. Antiques: Nov 1971...RI History: Spring & Summer 1972
Image ID Numbers:
  • https://RIHS.MINISISINC.COM/RIHS_IMAGE/RHiX171127w.jpg
Permanent Record Link:
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