Hannah Wentworth Atkinson (1760): Art, History and Details

Hannah Wentworth Atkinson (1760) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Joseph Blackburn (British, c. 1730–1787).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Posed bolt upright in a billowing satin gown, Hannah Wentworth Atkinson is almost a mannequin for the display of opulent textiles. The wife of the colony of New Hampshire's chief justice and richest man, she found a suitable portrait painter in Joseph Blackburn, who sought to present the fashionable tastes of his sitters.

Object facts

• Title: Hannah Wentworth Atkinson
• Date: 1760
• Creator attribution: Joseph Blackburn (British, c. 1730–1787)
• Culture: America
• Type: Painting
• Technique: oil on canvas
• Dimensions: Unframed: 124.7 x 99.3 cm (49 1/8 x 39 1/8 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1919.1005

A detail from the museum

Painter Joseph Blackburn worked in Bermuda before moving to the Thirteen Colonies.

Collection credit

Gift of the John Huntington Art and Polytechnic Trust

Further reading listed by the museum

• "Accessions." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 5 (1919): 97-98.
• Park, Lawrence. "Report on the Department of Colonial Art." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 7/8 (1919): 130-31.
• L. P. "Two Portraits by Joseph Blackburn." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 6, no. 9 (1919): 139-47.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.