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American Portraits

 
 
Mary Sylvester, ca. 1754
Joseph Blackburn (ca. 1700–1780)
Oil on canvas; 49 7/8 x 40 in. (126.7 x 102.1 cm)
Gift of Sylvester Dering, 1916 (16.68.2)
 
Mrs. Francis Brinley and Her Son Francis, 1729
John Smibert (1688–1751)
Oil on canvas; 50 x 39 1/4 in. (127.0 x 99.7 cm)
Rogers Fund, 1962 (62.79.2)


In eighteenth-century England, elite women played shepherdesses and goddesses at masquerades, but such masked balls were proscribed in the American colonies. The only opportunity for colonial women to participate in such costuming and social fantasy was through portraiture. Mary Sylvester lived in Newport, Rhode Island, and Shelter Island, New York.

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