#robert edge pine

[portrait-paintings]

David Garrick

Artist: Robert Edge Pine (English, 1730-1788)

Date: c. 1775

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom

David Garrick

David Garrick (19 February 1716 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor who wrote, produced and influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in several amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's Richard III, audiences and managers began to take notice.

Impressed by his portrayals of Richard III and several other roles, Charles Fleetwood engaged Garrick for a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End. He remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy. This purchase inaugurated 29 years of Garrick's management of the Drury Lane, during which time it rose to prominence as one of the leading theatres in Europe. At his death, three years after he retired from Drury Lane and the stage, he was given a lavish public funeral at Westminster Abbey where he was buried in Poets' Corner.

[didoofcarthage]

George Washington by Robert Edge Pine

English, 1785

oil on canvas

National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

[aswithasunbeam]

Alexander Hamilton, portrait by Robert Edge Pine c. 1786

“The only other early portrait of Hamilton, lost sight of for many years and only recently rediscovered, is the one painted probably about 1786 by Robert Edge Pine (c. 1730- c.1789). Having made a name for himself in England as a painter of historical scenes and portraits, the artist came to America in 1783 with the avowed intention of painting the heroes and patriots of the Revolution. He was considered one of the best colorists of his time. His Hamilton portrait was included on a broadside list of his works exhibited at the Columbian Museum in Boston, 1799.” - From “Life Portraits of Alexander Hamilton” by Harry MacNeill Bland and Virginia W. Northcott, William & Mary Quarterly, Vol. 12, No.2, p.189.

Hamilton is about 29 years old in this portrait - it was painted a year before the Constitutional Convention and three years before Hamilton would be appointed as the nation’s first Treasury Secretary.

[books0977]

Sarah Vaughan, née Hallowell, and her Son Richard Vaughan (1760). Robert Edge Pine (English, 1730-1788). Oil on canvas. Government Art Collection, London. 

Vaughan, the wife of merchant Samuel Vaughan, is shown with her sewing basket on the table next to her. She wears the fruits of her husband’s success: pendant earrings, a pearl necklace and elaborate bracelet. Their son, Richard, holds a book, referring back to those in the companion portrait of his father.

[portrait-paintings]

Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge)

Artist: Robert Edge Pine (English, 1730-1788)

Date: c. 1775

Medium: Oil on canvas

Collection: National Portrait Gallery, London, United Kingdom

Catharine Macaulay (née Sawbridge) (1731-1791), Historian and Political Polemicist

Catharine Macaulay was a famed English Whig historian. She is the first Englishwoman to become a published historian and during her lifetime the world's only published female historian. She was the first English radical to visit America after independence from 15 July 1784 to 17 July 1785. Her visit included a visit to George and Martha Washington's Mount Vernon where she met with George Washington. Her most prominent work was an eight-volume history of England in which she argued that the people have the right to overthrow their monarch for their own natural rights.

[didoofcarthage]

Fanny Bassett Washington by Robert Edge Pine. English, 1785. Oil on canvas. In the collection of Mount Vernon. 

From Mount Vernon’s website:

Fanny Bassett, Martha Washington's niece, first joined the Washington household in the fall of 1784, and quickly endeared herself to her aunt and other members of the family. A year later, Fanny married George Washington's nephew, George Augustine Washington. Washington asked the beloved couple to make their home at Mount Vernon, requesting his nephew to act as farm manager, and Fanny became her aunt's trusted deputy in running the affairs of the household. Her portrait, painted in 1785, was prominently hung in the West or Front Parlor at Mount Vernon.

[lionofchaeronea]

The Young Sportsman, Robert Edge Pine, 1766

[18thcenturylove]

Portrait of Mary Ball Washington by Robert Edge Pine, 1786

(My college, the University of Mary Washington, was named for her)