Mrs. Nathaniel Cunningham

Artist John Smibert (American, 1688-1751)

Date1730

DimensionsFrame: 56 1/2 × 47 × 2 1/2 in. (143.5 × 119.4 × 6.4 cm)

MediumOil on canvas

ClassificationPaintings

Credit LinePurchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott

Object number

1948.19

On View

Toledo Museum of Art (2445 Monroe Street), Gallery, 29

Label TextJohn Smibert worked in colonial Boston, but was trained in London, giving him the knowledge and skill to portray his subjects in keeping with English styles. Ann Boucher Cunningham’s pose, hairstyle, and dress recall portraits of English noblewomen. In fact the pose and background of this portrait were derived from a mezzotint after a portrait of Margaret Jones, Countess of Ranelagh, by British artist Sir Godfrey Kneller (see illustration). For a busy portrait artist like Smibert, it was not uncommon to have “pre-painted” the body with a pose and costume based on a print sent from England. When a client commissioned a portrait, they could choose the pose and costume they preferred and perhaps suggest some details. The artist then painted the client’s head, creating a likeness in the latest British fashion. Ann Boucher married Captain Nathaniel Cunningham (died 1748) in 1722. Cunningham was one of the wealthiest merchants in Boston, making much of his fortune as a middleman in the slave trade, purchasing enslaved Africans from Barbados in order to sell them in Boston.Published ReferencesBayley, F., Five Colonial Artists of New England, Boston, 1929, p. 375, repr. (incorrectly as Sarah Kilby Cunningham).

Bolton, C., ed., American Portraits 1620-1825 Found in Massachusetts, Boston, 1939, I, p. 100, no. 528.

Foote, H., John Smibert, Painter, Cambridge, MA, 1950, p. 149.

Sellers, C., "Mezzotint Prototypes of Colonial Portraiture," Art Quarterly, XX, no. 4, Winter, 1957, p. 434, no. 22c, repr. p. 438.

Belknap, W., American Colonial Painting: Materials for a History, Cambridge, 1959, pp. 298, 348, repr. pl. XXV, no. 22c.

Washington, W. Selden, Jr., "Our Colonial Heritage," The Toledo Museum of Art Museum News, vol. 2, Autumn 1959, p. 4, repr. p. 3.

Prown, J., John Singleton Copley, Cambridge, MA, 1966, I, p. 19, fig. 24.

Young, Mahonri Sharp, "From Howling Wilderness to Queensborough Bridge," Apollo, vol. 86, no. 70, Dec. 1967, p. 496, repr. fig. 2, p. 497.

"The Notebook of John Smibert," Antiques, vol. 95, no. 3, March 1969, repr. p. 369.

Massachusetts Historical Society, The Notebook of John Smibert, Boston, 1969, pp. 23, 89, 107.

Osborne, Harold, ed., The Oxford Companion to the Decorative Arts, New York, 1975, repr. p. 277.

Toledo Museum of Art, The Toledo Museum of Art, American Paintings, Toledo, 1979, pp. 99, 100, pl. 1.

Craven, Wayne, American Art, History and Culture, Madison, WI, 1994, pp. 71, 72, fig. 5.5.

Saunders, Richard H., John Smibert: Colonial America's First Portrait Painter, New Haven, CT, 1995, pp. 103, 170, fig. 110, p. 105.

Exhibition HistoryBoston Museum of Fine Arts, 1882.

Boston Art Club, American Painters Before the Revolution, 1922, p. 12, no. 24.

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 53 Early American Portraits, 1935.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1936, no. 3.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 1942, no. 193.

Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Washington, D. C., National Portrait Gallery, American Portraiture in the Grand Manner: 1720-1920, 1981, no. 4, pp. 16, 84, repr. (col.) p. 85.