Mary Bethel Boude (Mrs. Samuel Boude)

1755/1756

Benjamin West

Painter, American, 1738 - 1820

Shown from the waist-up, a pale-skinned woman wearing a gold-colored gown and a muted dark pink shawl stands before a hazy landscape in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled slightly to our right, but she turns her face to our left as she looks at us from the corners of her dark gray eyes. She has an oval face with low, straight eyebrows, a long nose, prominent chin, and her thin, pale pink lips are closed. Her brown hair is pulled back and a lock curls over her right shoulder, to our left. Her low-cut bodice is lined with filmy ruffles and has a pink bow at the front center. The bodice fits tightly to the waist, where the full skirt flares out in deep folds. The sleeves end at the elbows with broad, ruffled cuffs. A dusky rose-pink shawl wraps around her back and over her elbows. She rests her left arm, to our right, on a ledge and holds a dark pink flower in that hand. The background has a suggestion of a structure nestled in dark trees to our right and a sky mottled with clouds across most of the picture.

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Artwork overview

Artwork history & notes

Provenance

The sitter's descendant, Elizabeth F.G. Heistand [Mrs. Henry S. Heistand, b. 1872], Marietta, Pennsylvania;[1] sold December 1947 to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York); bought that same month by Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch;[2] gift 1964 to NGA.
[1] Loan Exhibition of Historical and Contemporary Portraits Illustrating the Evolution of Portraiture in Lancaster Country, Pennsylvania, under the auspices of The Iris Club and The Historical Society of Lancaster County...November 23, to December 13, 1912, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1912, 7; William Sawitzky, "The American Work of Benjamin West", Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 62, no. 4 (October 1938): 451. According to Sarah McCorkle Case, Bellmont, 1726 - Mt. Bethel, 1929, Columbia, Pennsylvania?, 1929?: 19, this portrait and that of Mrs. Boude hung for many years at "Mt. Bethel," the Bethel family home in Columbia, Pennsylvania. Case recounts two family stories about the portraits: that they were recovered from a tavern, and that the damage to the eyes was caused by a bad-tempered child.
[2] Letter from Melissa De Medeiros, librarian, M. Knoedler & Co., 30 October 1989, in NGA curatorial files.

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1912

  • Loan Exhibition of Historical and Contemporary Portraits Illustratingthe Evolution of Portraiture in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, The Iris Club and Historical Society of Lancaster County, Lancaster, 1912, no. 25

1948

  • American Paintings of the 18th & Early 19th Century in Our Current Collection, M. Knoedler & Co., New York, 1948, no. 10b

1957

  • American Primitive Paintings from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1957, no. 13

1958

  • American Primitive Paintings from the Collection of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, Springfield Art Museum, Missouri, 1958, no cat.

1976

  • John Singleton Copley 1738-1815, Gilbert Stuart 1755-1828, Benjamin West 1738-1820 in America and England, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1976, no. 3

Bibliography

1929

  • Case, Sarah McCorkle. Bellmont, 1726 - Mt. Bethel, 1929. Columbia, Pennsylvania (?), 1929 (?): 18-20.

1938

  • Sawitzky, William. "The American Work of Benjamin West." Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 62, no. 4 (October 1938): 437, 451 (12), repro.

1952

  • Flexner, James Thomas. "Benjamin West's American Neo-Classicism." New-York Historical Society Quarterly 36 (1952): 24-25.

1970

  • American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 120, repro., as Mrs. Samuel Boudé.

1980

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 255, repro., as Mrs. Samuel Boudé.

1981

  • Williams, William James. A Heritage of American Paintings from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1981: 37, repro. 36.

  • Dallett, Francis James. "The Inter-Colonial Grimstone Boude and his Family." The Genealogist 2, no. 1 (Spring 1981): 92.

1986

  • Von Erffa and Staley 1986, 494, no. 597, repro.

1992

  • American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 376, repro., as Mrs. Samuel Boude.

1995

  • Miles, Ellen G. American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1995: 320-321, repro. 319.

Wikidata ID

Q20178109

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