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.