James Pitts

1757

Joseph Jonathan Blackburn American, 1700-1780

On View

American, Level 2, West Wing

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Provenance

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Exhibition History

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Published References

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Catalogue Raisonné

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About the Artwork

From 1752 to 1763, English-born artist Joseph Blackburn painted more than one hundred portraits of wealthy colonists in a modern British style that emphasized fashionable dress and personal refinement. After leaving Great Britain, he painted first in Bermuda in 1752 before traveling to Newport, Rhode Island; Boston, Massachusetts; and Portsmouth, New Hampshire. He returned home to Great Britain after that prolific period.

James Pitts (1712 – 1776) was a prominent merchant and politician in Boston. He is best remembered today for advocating against the concentration of power in the office of a royally appointed governor and against the housing of British troops in Boston. He penned a November 1773 resolution protesting the importation of tea to Boston by the East India Company, warning of “[c]onsequences that may disturb the Peace and good Order of the Town.” The Boston Tea Party followed in December.

Title James Pitts

Artwork Date 1757

Artist Joseph Jonathan Blackburn

Life Dates 1700-1780

Nationality Please note: Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events. Some definitions include: Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation. American

Culture Please note: Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group. ----------

Medium Oil on canvas

Dimensions Unframed: 50 1/8 × 40 inches (127.3 × 101.6 cm) Framed: 57 3/4 × 47 5/8 × 3 inches (146.7 × 121 × 7.6 cm)

Classification Paintings

Department American Art before 1950

Credit Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund

Accession Number This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection. Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum’s holdings. For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups. 58.357

Markings

Signed Signed and dated, lower right: J. Blackburn Pinxt 1757

Provenance

until 1776, the sitter, James Pitts (Boston, Massachusetts, USA);
his son, John Pitts (Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, USA);
his great-grandnephew, Thomas Pitts (Detroit, Michigan, USA);
Mrs. Thomas Pitts (Detroit, Michigan, USA);
her son, S. Lendall Pitts [1875-1938] (Detroit, Michigan, USA);
Mrs. S. Lendall Pitts [1880-1963] (Norfolk, Virginia, USA);
1958-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

For more information on provenance, please visit:

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Exhibition History

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The exhibition history of a number of objects in our collection only begins after their acquisition by the museum, and may reflect an incomplete record.

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Published References

Goodwin, D. Provincial Pictures by Brush and Pen. Chicago, 1886, pp. 14-16, 25-59.

Pilgrim Tercentenary Exhibition. Exh. cat., DIA. Detroit, 1921, no. 2, [as Elizabeth Bowdoin].

Park, Lawrence. “Joseph Blackburn: A Colonial Portrait Painter with a Descriptive List of his Works.” American Antiquarian Society Proceedings 32 (October 1922): pp. 311-312.

A Loan Exhibition of American Colonial and Early Federal Art. Exh. cat., DIA. Detroit, 1930, no. 72.

Richardson, Edgar P. “American Portrait Painting.” Bulletin of the DIA 14, no. 1 (October 1934): p. 12.

Baker, C.H. Collins. “Notes on Joseph Blackburn and Nathaniel Dance.” Huntington Library Quarterly 9 (November 1945-August 1946): p. 41.

Eight Generations of the Pitts Family. Exh. cat., DIA. Detroit, 1959, p. 22 (ill.).

Payne, Elizabeth H. “Pitts Family Portraits of the Eighteenth Century.” Antiques 77 (January 1960): p. 88.

Stevens, William B. Jr. “Joseph Blackburn and his Newport Sitters, 1754-1756.” Newport History 40 (Summer 1967): pp. 105-106.

Shaw, Nancy Rivard, et al. American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts. Vol. 1, Works by Artists Born Before 1816. New York, 1991, pp. 40-43 (ill.).

Colman, Benjamin W. "Joseph Blackburn: A British Portrait Painter in the Atlantic World." Bulletin of the DIA 98, no. 1 (2024): p. 64 (fig. 1).

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