Esther Boardman

Artist:: Ralph Earl (American, Worcester County, Massachusetts 1751–1801 Bolton, Connecticut)

Date:: 1789

Medium:: Oil on canvas

Dimensions:: 42 1/2 x 32 in. (108 x 81.3 cm)

Classification:: Paintings

Credit Line:: Gift of Edith and Henry Noss, 1991

Accession Number:: 1991.338

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 755

The Connecticut portraits Earl painted after returning from a seven-year stay in England are his greatest works as they combined his natural talents with the lessons he had gleaned from English art of the period. He rendered most of this portrait of Esther Boardman (1762–1851) in deep shades of green and brown to highlight his sitter’s striking face. Her alert gaze suggests intelligence, and her coiffure and wraparound dress, or levite, reveal her to be at the height of fashion, as was her brother, Elijah (whose portrait is also in the Museum's collection; 1979.395). The background shows the town of New Milford, which the Boardman family had been instrumental in settling.

Signature: [at lower left]: R. Earl pint / 1789

descended in the Boardman family; Mrs. William S. Tyler, by 1945; her daughter, Edith and Henry Noss, Plainfield, New Jersey, by 1991

Essays
Art and Society of the New Republic, 1776–1800
Students of Benjamin West (1738–1820)

Timelines
The United States, 1600–1800 A.D.

American Impressionism and Realism: The Painting of Modern Life, 1885–1915
"Faces of a New Nation: American Portraits of the 18th and Early 19th Centuries": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 61, no. 1 (Summer, 2003)
"Recent Acquisitions: A Selection, 1991–1992": The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, v. 50, no. 2 (Fall, 1992)

Department

American Paintings and Sculpture (5,341)

Artist / Maker / Culture

Ralph Earl (8)

Object Type / Material

Canvas (4,812)

Oil paintings (3,010)