Boston-born John Greenwood served as an apprentice to the sign painter, japanner, and engraver Thomas Johnston (1708–1767) from 1742, until about 1745, whereupon he became a successful portrait painter until his departure in 1752 for Surinam, a Dutch colony in South America. After painting in Surinam, then studying mezzotint engraving in Amsterdam, Greenwood moved in 1762, to London, where he became a successful art dealer, auctioneer, and a founder of the Society of Artists.

This portrait descended in the family of Judge Robert Brown (1682–1775) of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and when originally acquired was thought to be a portrait of the judge’s wife, Priscilla Johnson Brown. However, Robert Brown’s wife died in 1744, when Greenwood was still serving as an apprentice. Critical to the identification of the sitter is the fact that this portrait descended with the Brown family of Plymouth.

Recent research suggests that this portrait represents one of Robert Brown’s daughters, Priscilla (b. 1725), who married Dr. John Greenleaf of Boston in 1743 and gave birth to three children: Priscilla (b. 1746), Elizabeth (b. 1748), and John (b. 1750; see related examples). The Greenleaf children predeceased their parents, thus explaining why the portrait of their mother would have descended with the Brown rather than the Greenleaf family. It is possible that Judge Brown commissioned this portrait of his daughter, Priscilla, after she married John Greenleaf in 1743 and moved to Boston. An example of Greenwood’s interest in genteel poses, clarity of modeling, and sharp color contrasts, this portrait hung in the Brown family home in Plymouth until 1936.

Related examples: Joseph Blackburn, Priscilla Brown (private collection). From 1756 to 1758, John Singleton Copley painted the children of Dr. John and Priscilla Brown Greenleaf several years after they died of mysterious circumstances: Priscilla (private collection); Elizabeth and John (ex coll. Mr. and Mrs. Howard Joynt, Alexandria, Virginia). Copley’s portraits were based on earlier (c. 1752) works painted by Joseph Badger of the two daughters or some other lost images. The Bayou Bend portrait is similar in format and style to many other Greenwood portraits, such as Mrs. Benjamin Austin, 1747–52, Winterthur, and it appears to be a variant of the mezzotint prototype by John Smith of the Portrait of Princess Anne after Sir Godfrey Kneller, 1692; see Sellers 1957, p. 430.

Adapted from 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.