H428: Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844)

Identification and Creation

Object Number

H428

People

Mather Brown, American (Boston, MA 1761 - 1831 London, England)
Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844)

Title

Charles Bulfinch (1763-1844)

Classification

Paintings

Work Type

painting

Date

1786

Places

Creation Place: Europe, United Kingdom, England, London

Culture

American

Persistent Link

https://hvrd.art/o/299910

Physical Descriptions

Medium

Oil on canvas

Dimensions

74.9 x 62.9 cm (29 1/2 x 24 3/4 in.)
framed: 88.9 x 76.2 x 5.1 cm (35 x 30 x 2 in.)

Inscriptions and Marks

• label: back of frame: Portrait of Charles Bulfinch, Architect - Painted in/ London by Browne, in 1786 - Age 23. The property of Ellen Susan Bulfinch, Cambridge
• label: back of frame: From National Portrait Gallery/This New Man/Sept. 28-Dec. 31 1968/Opening Exhibit

Provenance

Recorded Ownership History

Commissioned by Charles Bulfinch, 1786; owned by Thomas Bulfinch, Boston, MA, in 1855; by descent in family to Ellen Susan Bulfinch, Cambridge, MA; to Francis V. Bulfinch, 1918; his gift to Harvard University, 1933.

Acquisition and Rights

Credit Line

Harvard University Portrait Collection, Gift of Francis V. Bulfinch to Harvard University, 1933

Object Number

H428

Division

European and American Art

Contact

am_europeanamerican@harvard.edu

Permissions

The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.

Publication History

• "Fashioning an American Diplomat: The Mather Brown Portrait of Thomas Jefferson", p. 22, fig. 3
• Ellen Susan Bulfinch, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Bulfinch, Architect, with other Family Papers, Houghton Mifflin Company, p. 56, ill.
• [Letter from Charles Bulfinch to his mother], September 17, 1786, Unpublished, Houghton Library, Harvard University
• Proceedings, Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, MA, October 1913-June 1914), vol. XLVII, p. 292
• Martha A. S. Shannon, "The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch", The American Magazine of Art (1925), vol. 16, pp. 431-437, ill. p. 432
• Charles A. Place, Charles Bulfinch, Architect and Citizen, Houghton Mifflin Company (Boston and New York, 1925), p. 8-11, 60, ill. n.p.
• Talbot Faulkner Hamlin, The American Spirit in Architecture, Yale University Press (U.S.) (New Haven, 1926), p. 100, fig. 216
• Cuthbert Lee, Early American Portrait Painters: The Fourteen Principal Earliest Native-born Painters, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT, 1929), p. 283
• Laura M. Huntsinger, Harvard Portraits: A Catalogue of Portrait Paintings at Harvard University, ed. Alan Burroughs, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1936), pp. 32-33
• Historical Records Survey, Division of Professional and Service Projects, Works Progress Administration, American Portraits, 1620-1825, found in Massachusetts, Volumes 1 and 2, Historical Records Survey (Boston, MA, 1939), p. 61, cat. 324
• Helen Comstock, "Portraits of American craftsmen", The Magazine Antiques (October 1959), vol. LXXVI, no. 4, pp. 320-327, ill. p. 322
• Alice Winchester, Collectors & Collections: The Antiques Anniversary Book, Antiques (New York, NY, 1961), ill. p. 126
• Harold Kirker and James Kirker, Bulfinch's Boston, 1787-1817, Oxford University Press (UK) (New York, NY, 1964), pp. 4-6, pl. 1
• Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1966), p. 315
• Charles Nagel and Oscar Handlin, This New Man: A Discourse in Portraits, exh. cat., ed. J. Benjamin Townsend, National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian Institution Press (Washington, DC, 1968), ill. p. 186
• William Dunlap, History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, Dover Publications Inc. (New York, 1969), vol. I, p. 228, pl. 71
• Harold Kirker, The Architecture of Charles Bulfinch, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA, 1969), frontispiece, p. 1
• Richard McLanathan, Art in America: A Brief History, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York, 1973), p. 76
• Wendy Ann Cooper, "Paul Revere's Boston, 1735-1818", The Magazine Antiques (July 1975), vol. 108, pp. 80-93, p. 89, fig. 10
• L. D. Geller, The Architecture of Elegance: The Tradition of Charles Bulfinch and the Plymouth Federal Savings Bank, The Pilgrim Society (Plymouth, MA, 1976), frontispiece
• Franklin P. Cole, Mather Books & Portraits Through Six Early American Generations, with Biographical Sketches, Casco Printing Company (Portland, ME, 1978), pp. 208-209, 215, 217, ill. p. 218
• Norman K. Risjord, Representative Americans: The Revolutionary Generation, D. C. Heath and Co. (Lexington, MA and Toronto, 1980), ill. p. 121
• Joseph Jacobs Thorndike, Jr., ed., Three Centuries of Notable American Architects, American Heritage Publishing Co. (New York, NY, 1981), ill. p. 11.
• Dorinda Evans, Mather Brown: Early American Artist in England, Wesleyan University Press (Middletown, CT, 1982), p. 54, fig. 32, p. 200
• Diane Maddex, ed., Master Builders: A Guide to Famous American Architects, National Trust for Historic Preservation (Washington, DC, 1985), ill. p. 21
• Lisa Koenigsberg, "'Lifewriting': First American Biographers of Architects and Their Works", The Architectural Historian in America: A Symposium in Celebration of the Fiftieth Anniversary of the Founding of the Society of Architectural Historians, ed. Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, National Gallery of Art and University Press of New England (Hanover and London, 1990), p. 51, fig. 11
• Lawrence W. Kennedy, Planning the City Upon a Hill: Boston Since 1630, University of Massachusetts at Boston (Boston, MA, 1992), p. 25, fig. 2.1
• Eleanor Bailey, "Who They Were", The Old-House Journal (Brooklyn, NY, September 1994 - October 1994), vol. XXII, no. 6, pp. 24-26, ill. p. 24
• Michael Wentworth and Elizabeth Lamb Clark, Boston Library Society. 1794-1994, exh. cat., Boston Athenaeum (Boston, MA, 1995), p. 30, pl. III
• The Johns Hopkins University Press, Thomas Jefferson's Travels in Europe, 1784-1789, George Green Shackelford (Baltimore and London, 1995), p. 164
• Moying Li-Marcus, Beacon Hill: The Life & Times of a Neighborhood, Northeastern University Press (Boston, MA, 2002), ill. p. 12
• Hugh Howard, Dr. Kimball and Mr. Jefferson: Rediscovering the Founding Fathers of American Architecture, Bloomsbury (New York, 2006), ill. p. 185
• Jay Wickersham, "The Financial Misadventures of Charles Bulfinch", The New England Quarterly (September 2010), vol LXXXIII, no. 3, pp. 413-481, p. 416, fig. 1
• Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr. and Melissa Renn, American Paintings at Harvard, Volume One: Paintings, Watercolors, and Pastels by Artists Born before 1826, Yale University Press (U.S.) and Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge and New Haven, 2014), pp. 106-07, cat. 59, ill.

Exhibition History

• This New Man: A Discourse in Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, 09/28/1968 - 12/31/1968
• Paul Revere's Boston 1735-1818, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, 04/18/1975 - 10/12/1975
• The Old State House, Old State House, Hartford, 05/19/1979 - 09/30/1979
• Bicentennial of the Boston Library Society, Rodney Armstrong, Boston, 02/13/1995 - 04/01/1995
• The History of the Boston Library Society Exhibition, Rodney Armstrong, Boston, 02/13/1995 - 04/01/1995
• Temple of Liberty: Building a Capitol for a New Nation, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., 02/22/1995 - 06/24/1995

Verification Level