Abigail Chesebrough (Mrs. Alexander Grant)

1754

Joseph Blackburn
English, active in British colonies in North America and Bermuda 1752–64

Dressed in imported luxurious fabrics and accessories, 20-year-old Abigail Chesebrough displays the material wealth of her family in Newport, Rhode Island, in this portrait by Joseph Blackburn. Her father, David Chesebrough, was a merchant and an enslaver, amassing his fortune through the triangular trade of people of color, molasses, and rum between Western Africa, the Caribbean, and New England.

Blackburn shaped his career around the Atlantic trade networks developed in the 18th century. Probably trained in London, he traveled to Bermuda in 1752, securing commissions there. Two years later he was in Newport, where he painted Abigail as well as her stepmother. Blackburn moved on to paint portraits in Boston and Portsmouth before returning to England in 1764.

Status: On View, Gallery 166
Department: Arts of the Americas

Artist: Joseph Blackburn
Title: Abigail Chesebrough (Mrs. Alexander Grant)
Place: Newport (Object made in)
Date: 1754
Medium: Oil on canvas
Inscriptions: Signed on bottom of window at right: "I Blackburn Pinxt 1754"
Dimensions: 127.6 × 101.5 cm (50 × 40 in.)
Credit Line: Bequest of Miss Amelia Peabody
Reference Number: 1984.725
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Bolton and Binsse, Antiquarian (November, 1930), 50, ff.
Morgan and Foote, “Descriptive List of the Work of Joseph Blackburn,” American Antiquarian Society 110 (1937), 30–31.
Judith A. Barter et al., American Arts at The Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I (Art Institute of Chicago, 1998), 71–75, no. 17.

David Chesebrough, Newport, Rhode Island, and Stonington, CT, from 1754; by descent to Abigail Chesebrough, Newport, Rhode Island, from 1782 to 1807; by descent to Deacon David Chesebrough Smith, Stonington, CT, from 1808 to 1833; by descent to Betsey Smith Williams, Stonington, CT, from 1833 to 1860; by descent to Bessie S. Williams Sherman, Chicago, from 1860 to about 1912; Stonington Historical Society, Stonington, CT, from 1916; Vose Galleries, Boston, 1977; Amelia Peabody, Boston, 1977; bequeathed to the Art Institute of Chicago, 1984.

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