Of all the paintings in Bayou Bend’s collection, this fine portrait by John Wollaston has proved the most elusive in terms of the identity of the sitter and the date and location of its execution. The attribution to Wollaston, the midcentury English artist who first introduced Rococo style—the latest in English portrait fashion—to the colonies, has never been at issue. Wollaston was a successful and celebrated colonial artist, painting as many as two hundred portraits in his sporadic career. The son of John Wollaston, an early eighteenth-century portrait artist, Wollaston received his artistic training in London with a drapery painter, probably Joseph van Aken. The finesse with which he painted silks, satins, braids, and lace attests to his specialized training. Such peculiar mannerisms in his portraits as lips with upturned corners and almond-shaped eyes are consistent with the English portrait traditions established by artists like Thomas Hudson and Allan Ramsay, which were transferred to the colonies through Wollaston and Joseph Blackburn (act. 1752–c. 1778). 

Wollaston migrated to the American colonies in 1749, where he became, over the next decade, a prolific and prominent portraitist in both the middle and southern colonies. From 1749 to 1752, Wollaston painted the New York gentry (see B.69.344). From 1752 to 1757, he painted in Philadelphia, Annapolis, and in Virginia, before returning to Philadelphia in 1758–59. Wollaston left the colonies for the British West Indies around 1759, returning in 1765, this time traveling south to Charleston, South Carolina, where he painted the local gentry until 1767 (see B.54.20). He returned to London in 1767, and little documentation of his later whereabouts survives. 

This three-quarter portrait presents a confident young man surrounded by props that identify his profession. Set against a brilliant seascape background featuring a double-decker ship with an ensign and red mast pennant, the sitter clutches a telescope and rests his hand on a cannon, features common in portraits of British naval officers. The sitter wears a sword and a navy jacket with silver trim; its blue lapels, white cuffs, and braid identify his rank as captain. His waistcoat is of shimmering white satin, providing textural contrast to his starched cuffs and stock. 

When acquired by Bayou Bend in 1969, the portrait was identified as a “naval Captain, probably Admiral Keppel when a young man.” Keppel (1725–1786) was a popular British hero of the American Revolution; he became the subject of numerous portraits, prints, and commemorative ceramics. Research on the sitters uniform in 1988 revealed a problem in the portrait’s dating; the sitter’s blue lapels and white cuffs indicate the uniform of a captain of under three years seniority. In 1755, Keppel had been a captain of over three years seniority for over five years. There is no reason why Keppel would have been portrayed in a uniform of inferior rank, especially since portraits of military officers were usually commissioned to mark a promotion in rank. The portrait was then redated to Wollaston’s English period. At the same time, the ship in the background, if it represented a specific ship at all, was identified as either the Anson, a sixty-gun double-decker that Keppel commanded in 1747, or the Centurion, which he commanded in 1749.

It is difficult to date the painting on style alone, as Wollaston’s late English and early colonial paintings are quite similar. Recent research conducted on other elements of the picture—namely, the uniform and flags—has provided new information but does not resolve the dating issue. For example, the silver, rather than the usual gold, braid on the uniform suggests that the uniform was created either before uniform standards were established in 1748 or sometime around 1748. A more interesting discovery, however, is that all the other known Wollaston portraits of naval officers that relate to the Bayou Bend portrait (see related examples) also feature red mast pennants, which identify the ships within the red squadron. All of these sitters, then, may have served under higher officers of the red squadron, which may eventually help to identify a sitter.

Related examples: Several by Wollaston include Portrait of a Naval Officer, probably Samuel, Viscount Hood, c. 1746, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, England; Portrait of a Naval Officer, c. 1749, Art Institute of Chicago; Portrait of an Officer (Sir Charles Hardy?), c. 1755. the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Unidentified British Navy Officer, c. 1745, NGA; and Captain Thomas Noel, undated, Christie’s, London, Important English Pictures, sale 3257, November 22, 1985, lot 108. Also English school, possibly by Wollaston, Portrait of a Captain, c. 1750, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.

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.