About the Artwork
In January 1735, Scottish-born artist John Smibert recorded this portrait of the “young Mrs. Pitts” in his account book. The “young Mrs. Pitts” was Elizabeth Bowdoin Pitts (1717 – 1771), painted three years after her marriage to the merchant and politician James Pitts (1712 – 1776). Smibert painted a portrait of her mother-in-law, Elizabeth Lindall Pitts (1680 – 1763), the same month (Detroit Institute of Arts).
When Smibert arrived in New England in 1729, he was the first painter with academic training to work in that region. Wealthy Bostonians eagerly sought likenesses from his studio, where he also sold artist supplies and exhibited his copies of Renaissance paintings. That artistic setting advertised Smibert’s erudition and inspired motifs he quoted in his American works. In this portrait, he depicted his Boston sitter with a pose adapted from printed portraits of English aristocrats.
Elizabeth Pitts sat for the portrait painter Joseph Blackburn twenty-two years later (Detroit Institute of Arts).
Mrs. James Pitts
1735
John Smibert
1688-1751
American
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Oil on canvas
Unframed: 36 1/2 × 28 1/8 inches (92.7 × 71.4 cm) Framed: 43 3/4 × 35 1/2 × 3 7/8 inches (111.1 × 90.2 × 9.8 cm)
Paintings
American Art before 1950
Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund
58.352
Public Domain
Markings
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Provenance
1883, the sitter's great-great grandson,Thomas Pitts;his son, S. Lendall Pitts [1875-1938] (Paris, France);
by 1949, Mrs. S. Lendall Pitts [1880-1963] (Norfolk, Virginia, USA).
on loan to Mrs. Arthur Maxwell Parker (Helen Strong PItts) (Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan, USA).
1958-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)
For more information on provenance, please visit:
Provenance pageExhibition 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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Suggest FeedbackPublished References
Detroit Art Loan Exhibition. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1883, p. 64, no. 650.
Goodwin, D. Provincial Pictures by Brush and Pen. Chicago, 1886, pp. 14-15 (ill.).
Foote, H. John Smibert. Cambridge, 1950, pp. 160, 184.
Eight Generations of the Pitts Family. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1959, pp. 16-17 (ill.).
Payne, Elizabeth. “Pitts Family Portraits of the 18th Century.” Antiques 77, (January 1960): pp. 87, 89.
The Notebook of John Smibert. Boston, 1969, p. 93.
Saunders, R. The Collections of the Detroit Institute of Arts American Paintings, Vol. 1. Detroit, 1987.
Colman, Benjamin W. "Joseph Blackburn: A British Portrait Painter in the Atlantic World." Bulletin of the DIA 98, no. 1 (2024): p. 70 (fig. 4).
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Credit Line for Reproduction
John Smibert, Mrs. James Pitts, 1735, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund, 58.352.
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