Artwork Page for Charles Apthorp

Details / Information for Charles Apthorp

Charles Apthorp

1748

Robert Feke

(American, c. 1707–c. 1752)
Culture
America
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
Framed: 141.5 x 117.5 x 7.5 cm (55 11/16 x 46 1/4 x 2 15/16 in.); Unframed: 127 x 101.5 cm (50 x 39 15/16 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust 1919.1006
Public Domain
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Location
204 Colonial American
Print
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Did You Know?

Much remains unknown regarding artist Robert Feke’s life, including his birth and death dates.

Description

Called “the greatest merchant on this Continent” in his obituary, Apthorp helped transform Boston into one of the key commercial centers in the American colonies. When the fashionable painter Robert Feke came to town, Apthorp commissioned this elegantly tailored and confidently posed likeness of himself. The sailing ship in the distant background symbolizes Apthorp’s deep financial interests in the Atlantic trade, which included not only textiles, wine, and guns, but also enslaved people. In fact, the slave trade and its attendant commerce comprised a significant portion of colonial Boston’s economy until the decades after the Revolutionary War, when anti-slavery attitudes in New England gained momentum.
A vertically oriented naturalistic oil painting depicts Charles Apthorp, a man with light skin tone and a curled gray wig. He turns slightly to our right, wearing a heavy brown coat with gold lining that stands out against a dark interior wall. His left hand rests on his hip; his right touches papers and a quill on a table draped in red cloth. To the left, a window reveals a ship on a hazy sea.

Charles Apthorp

1748

Robert Feke

(American, c. 1707–c. 1752)
America

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