Early Philadelphia continued

Smibert painted 14 portraits over the course of eight weeks in Philadelphia, each time raising his price by more than 50 percent.

Smibert painted 14 portraits over the course of eight weeks in Philadelphia, each time raising his price by more than 50 percent. “Of the several European artists who brought late Baroque styles to the attention of the colonists during the 18th century, Smibert was the most gifted and influential,” says Rosalie Goldstein in American Colonial Portraits from the Fogg Art Museum.

Stylistic change arrived with American- born painters in the 1740s. Robert Feke of Long Island came to Philadelphia in 1746. His portraits of Dr. Phineas Bond (1746) and Margaret McCall (1749) hang in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Saunders describes Feke’s “decidedly brighter palette, precise definition of form, and appreciation of satiny fabrics.” John Hesselius, son of Gustavus, also began painting portraits in Philadelphia in the 1740s. His portrait of Lynford Lardner (1749) is “stylistically much closer to the work of Robert Feke in its sharp definition of form than to the work of Gustavus,” according to Philadelphia: Three Centuries of American Art.

At the same time, immigrant John Wollaston was “one of several painters who introduced English rococo portraiture—with its emphasis on graceful poses, pastel colors, and skillfully rendered costumes,” to quote the Worcester Art Museum’s online biography, though neither Wollaston nor the natives totally banished the Baroque. His portrait of Joseph Turner (1752), at the Chester County Historical Society, shows Wollaston’s skill with shimmery fabrics.

Chester County’s own Benjamin West, born in Springfield in 1738, studied with English portraitist William Williams, who had settled in Philadelphia around 1747. As a teenager, West painted oil portraits in Chester County, such as those of Jane and Robert Morris, c. 1753. Wealthy Philadelphians funded West’s trip to study art in Italy in 1760. West eventually settled in London and never returned. However, by training artists there, including John Singleton Copley, Charles Willson Peale, and Gilbert Stuart, who later created portraits in Philadelphia, Benjamin West and the wealth of Philadelphia brought international art home.

Christie’s sold a signed Charles Willson Peale portrait of George Washington for more than $21 million in 2006 and a John Wollaston Portrait of a Lady for $5,400 the same year. Many factors affect the price of a portrait, including the fame of the artist and of the subject, but an anonymous sitter can still be arresting. Especially if the artist captures, to quote Leonardo da Vinci, “the concept of his (or her) mind.”