  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.
  
  
  
  
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  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
  
  
  Copyright
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