Mrs. 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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Published References

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Catalogue Raisonné

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About the Artwork

The English-born artist Joseph Blackburn painted this portrait of Elizabeth Bowdoin Pitts (1717 – 1771) with special attention to her fashionable silk dress and jewelry. Posed elegantly in a landscape, her shawl floats to join the clouds behind her. With her left hand, she pinches a long pearl necklace draped over her shoulder and around her bodice, which is echoed by the smaller strand of pearls pinned into her hair.

The meticulous attention Blackburn paid to stylish clothing and jewels made him the most sought-after painter in Boston, Massachusetts, and Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the 1750s and 1760s. The same year he painted this portrait, Mary Russell of Boston wrote to a relative after seeing one of his other paintings, “Tell Mr. Blackburn that Miss Lucy is in love with his pictures, wonders what business he has to make such extreme fine lace and satin.”

Title Mrs. 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 5/8 × 47 1/2 × 2 7/8 inches (146.4 × 120.7 × 7.3 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. 58.356

Markings

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

Provenance

until 1776, James Pitts (Boston, Massachusetts, USA);
his son, John Pitts (Tyngsborough, Massachusetts, USA);
his great-grand nephew, 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)

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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. 10-11 (ill.).

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.

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

The Eleventh Exhibition: American Colonial and Early Federal Art. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1930, pp. 25-27, no. 71. [as Portrait of Elizabeth Bowdoin Pitts]

"Early America." Art Digest 4 (February 15, 1930): p. 8.

Bolton, Theodore and Harry Lorin Binsse. “An American Artist of Formula: Joseph Blackburn.” Antiquarian 15 (November 1930): p. 53.

Richardson, Edgar P. “American Portrait Painting.” Bulletin of the DIA 14, 1 (October 1934): p. 11.

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

Painting in America: The Story of 450 Years. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1957, no. 28.

Sellers, Charles Coleman. “Mezzotint Prototypes of Colonial Portraiture: A Survey Based on the Research of Waldron Phoenix Belknap, Jr.” Art Quarterly 20, 4 (Winter 1957): p. 441 (pl. 27a).

Belknap, Waldron Phoenix, Jr. American Colonial Painting. Cambridge, MA, 1959, p. 301, no. 27a (pl. 28).

Eight Generations of the Pitts Family. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1959, pp. 26-27. [as Mrs. James Pitts]

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. 97-99.

Cummings, Frederick J. and Charles Elam, eds. The Detroit Institute of Arts Illustrated Handbook. Detroit, 1971, p. 131.

American Portraiture in the Grand Manner, 1720-1920. Exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Los Angeles, 1982, pp. 90-92.

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

American Beauty: Paintings from the Detroit Institute of Arts, 1770-1920. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 2002.

Colman, Benjamin W. "Joseph Blackburn: A British Portrait Painter in the Atlantic World." Bulletin of the DIA 98, no. 1 (2024): p. 65 (fig. 2).

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