Benjamin Blyth
Portrait of the Reverend James Diman (1707–1788)

CultureAmerican
Titles
  • Portrait of the Reverend James Diman (1707–1788)
Date1760s
Made inSalem, Massachusetts, United States
MediumPastel on paper
DimensionsSheet (Oval): 13 3/4 × 12 in. (34.9 × 30.5 cm)
Credit LineThe Bayou Bend Collection, gift of Miss Ima Hogg
Object numberB.61.106.1
Current Location
Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens
Mcintire Bedroom
Exposé

Explore Further

Department
Bayou Bend
Description



The sitter of this portrait was once identified as the Reverend Dinham of Newburyport, Massachusetts, but no such person is recorded in Newburyport and Essex County records. Between 1737 and 1785, the Reverend James Diman (1707–1788) served as pastor in the Second (or East) Church of Salem, and he is now thought to be the subject of this pastel.


The pastel portrait displays the sitter in an elegant powdered wig, dressed in his black robe with brilliant white stock, and set against a blue background. The portrait is stylistically consistent with the works of the Salem pastellist Benjamin Blyth, by whom about thirty works survive.

 

This pastel was acquired with another, thought to represent the reverend’s wife (see B.61.106.2). Her portrait, however, is by a different hand and is probably English.

 

Related examples: Blyth, Portrait of John Adams, 1763, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston; Blyth also painted Eunice Diman, James Diman’s daughter, c. 1774, Massachusetts Historical Society.

 

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.


Provenance[Israel Sack, New York]; purchased by Miss Ima Hogg, 1961; given to MFAH, by 1966.
Exhibition History

Inscriptions, Signatures and Marks
[no inscriptions]
[no marks]

Cataloguing data may change with further research.

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