Sewell C. Biggs

Collection of American Art A Catalogue Volume II Paintings and Sculpture

Essays by William H. Gerdts and Roxanne M. Stanulis

John Hesselius (1728/29-1778)

215 Anna Dorothea Finney, ca. 1758 oil on canvas h. 48 in., w. 37 i,4 in.

published: Sweeney, "Paintings from the Biggs Collection," p. 892, pI. 2

JOHN HESSELIUS, son of noted portraitist Anna Dorotilea Finney (1735-18q) grew up in Gustavus Hesselius (1682-1755), was one of the New Castle, Delaware, the daughter of a wealthy most successful native-born American painters of physician and landowner of Irish descent named the colonial period. I He probably was born in John Finney and his first wife Elizabeth (nee Philadelphia and received his earliest training French), and lived in Amstel House, an eigh­ from his father. By 1750 he had established him­ teenth-century Georgian mansion (now one of self as a portraitist based in Philadelphia but New Castle's main tourist attractions), which her worked as an itinerant in Maryland, Delaware, father had built in 1738. 2 According to one source and Virginia. He settled in Anne Arundel County, Anna fell in love with a young British officer. Maryland, around 1760. He painted fewer por­ When he was killed in the French and Indian traits after his 1763 marriage to Mary Young War, she resolved never to wed. Her father had Woodward, a wealthy widow living near other ideas and arranged her marriage to her first Annapolis. He worked in Virginia in the early cousin John Finney, a farmer, justice of the peace, 1770S, and his last known painting is dated 1777. and elder in the Presbyterian Church in New The portrait of Anna Dorothea Finney dates London Township, in Chester County, from Hesselius's early mature period, when he Pennsylvania. In her later years Mrs. Finney was deeply influenced by British portraitist John became "a high and haughty dame, exercising Wollaston, who worked in Maryland and centurion-like authority, prone to the issuing of Virginia during the 1750S. Hesselius imitated orders and very vigilant and very determined in Wollaston's two most notable stylistic conven­ seeing that they were promptly and vigorously I Doud, "Hesselius: His Life tions: distinctive almond-shaped eyes, and an executed." When her son John Finney moved and Work"; Doud, '( Hesseliu5, Maryland Limner." emphasis on delineating the rich textures of the from New Castle to western Pennsylvania during subject's attire, in this case her blue satin dress. the early nineteenth century, this portrait was 2 Delaware Federal Writers' The three-quarter-length format, which accom­ "carried, wrapped around a flagstaff, across the Project, New Castle 0 11 the modated such accessories as the landscape back­ mountains by a rider on horseback.,,3 The por­ Delaware, p. 86. For biographi­ cal information on the sitter's ground and stone ledge, was the largest size por­ trait thereafter descended to John's daughter father, see Bendler, Colonial trait that Hesselius offered to his clients. Finney's Anna Dorothea Logan, to her daughter Emma Delaware Assemblymen, p. 41. conveRtional pose was probably derived from a Logan, and then to her cousin Robert Finney.

3 Keen, Descendants of loran British mezzotint engraving, and the flower that Kyn, p. 17-18. she holds was a common attribute of femininity. RWT