The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of August 17, 2022

Hannah Wentworth Atkinson

1760

Joseph Blackburn

(American)

America, 18th century

Oil on canvas

Unframed: 124.7 x 99.3 cm (49 1/8 x 39 1/8 in.)

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust 1919.1005

Location

not on view

Description

Posed bolt upright in a billowing satin gown, Mrs. Atkinson (born Hannah Wentworth, 1700–1769) is almost a mannequin for the display of opulent textiles. As the sister of the first royal governor of New Hampshire and the wife of that colony's chief justice and richest man, she was as close to an aristocrat as any person in British America. Mrs. Atkinson and her husband found a suitable portrait painter in Joseph Blackburn who was probably born and trained in England, and was thus familiar with fashionable tastes.

Inscriptions

Inscription

signed left on ledge: I Blackburn Pinxit 1760

Provenance
family of the sitter (1919); [Frank Bayley, Boston].
Citations
"Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 5 (1919): 97-98. Mentioned: p. 97 www.jstor.org
Park, Lawrence. "Report on the Department of Colonial Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 7/8 (1919): 130-31. Mentioned: p.130 www.jstor.org
L. P. "Two Portraits by Joseph Blackburn." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 9 (1919): 139-47. Reproduced: p. 138; Mentioned: pp. 139-140 www.jstor.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958. Mentioned and Reproduced: cat. no. 524 archive.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966. Reproduced: p. 155 archive.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969. Reproduced: p. 155 archive.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 197 archive.org
Exhibition history

Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Catalogue of the Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition of the Cleveland Museum of Art: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition, (26 June-4 October 1936), p. 21, listed catalogue number 19, not illustrated.

Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art, Juxtapositions (10 September-10 October 1965).

The Twentieth Anniversary Exhibition: The Official Art Exhibit of the Great Lakes Exposition. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 26-October 12, 1936).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1919.1005