Unidentified British Navy Officer

Provenance

(Rose M. [Mrs. Augustus] de Forest, New York);[1] purchased 2 March 1927 by Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[2] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1947 to NGA.

[1] The provenance provided for this portrait by Mrs. de Forest was from the sitter's second wife Anne Watts Kennedy to her cousin Stephen de Lancey, North Salem, New York, to his wife Hannah Sackett de Lancey (1751-1836) and her descendants, to Julia Baldwin Titus (b. 1825), Geneva and Albany, New York. This provenance was given for thirteen portraits sold to Clarke by de Forest. No evidence has been found to support such a history for this group of paintings; see Anna Wells Rutledge and James W. Lane, "110 Paintings in the Clarke Collection," unpublished typescript, NGA, Department of Curatorial Records, 1952, 64.

[2] The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928, annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). The receipt for payment is dated 2 March 1927 (NGA curatorial file).

Associated Names

Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
de Forest, Rose M.

Exhibition History

1928: A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Early American Portrait Painters, The Century Association, New York, 1928, no. 15, as Capt. Archibald Kennedy.

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 Capt. Archibald Kennedy.

1970: Two Centuries of American Portraits, University of Kentucky Art Gallery, Lexington; Paducah Art Gallery, J.B. Speed Art Museum, Louisville, 1970, unnumbered

1972: Loan for display with permanent collection, Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, 1972-1974.

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 Capt. Archibald Kennedy.

1931: Bolton, Theodore, and Harry Lorin Binsse. "Wollaston, An Early American Portrait Manufacturer" The Antiquarian 16 (June 1931): 50.

1952: Rutledge and Lane 1952, 64.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 124, repro., as Lieutenant Archibald Kennedy (?).

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 260, repro., as Lieutenant Archibald Kennedy (?).

1981: Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 16-17, color repro. 41.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 384, repro., as Lieutenant Archibald Kennedy (?).

1995: Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 352-355, color repro. 353.

Unidentified British Navy Officer, c. 1745

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