Description:
portrait; man; costume/uniform; military/war
Label Text:
Lieutenant David Billings and his wife, Mabel Little Billings, were residents of Hatfield, Massachusetts, the fifth generation of the American line of the Billings family in the town since Richard Billings first settled there in 1660. Although David Billings remained neutral during the Revolutionary War, he was active in town politics and was a selectman from 1775 until 1800, the year these portraits were painted. He is also recorded as freeing slaves thirty years in advance of the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts. David Billings' choice to wear a wig for this portrait was unusual, since this was no longer the custom at the time. It has been suggested that both this portrait and that of his wife were commissioned for the Billing's children as remembrances; perhaps this accounts for their formality and for the apparently youthful appearance of David Billings, who would have been seventy years old at the time of this sitting.
The itinerant painter William Jennys was recorded in Deerfield in 1801, following a steady route northward up the Connecticut Valley through Westfield to Hatfield, where he painted the Billings' portraits. His work has sometimes been confused with that of Richard Jennys (active 1760-1801), who may have been his father or older brother. Both artists worked in Milford, Connecticut, where William's earliest paintings were produced.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=SC+1972.41.1 |
