Mrs. Henry Hill (Anna Barrett) (c. 1765–70): Artwork and History

Mrs. Henry Hill (Anna Barrett) (c. 1765–70) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815).

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

In 2006 the Art Institute of Chicago was lucky enough to acquire John Singleton Copley's pastel Henry Hill (2006.83), the companion to Mrs. Henry Hill (Anna Barrett) which has been in the collection since 1959. Both pastels retain their original Rococo-style frames. They may have been carved by the Boston cratsman John Welch, who created many of Copley's Rococo frames, the type the artist used most frequently for his American portraits. The frame on Mrs. Henry Hill was gilded, as this was generally appropriate for the Rococo style; however, recent scholarship has revealed that a few Copley frames, like that of Henry Hill, were painted black. Thus, these portraits present two different ways that Copley's frames might have been finished.

Object facts

• Title: Mrs. Henry Hill (Anna Barrett)
• Date: c. 1765–70
• Artist attribution: John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)
• Place of origin: United States
• Medium: Pastel on paper mounted on linen
• Dimensions: 58.4 × 43.2 cm (23 × 17 in.)
• Type: Painting
• Department: Arts of the Americas
• Reference number: 1959.511

Collection credit

Gift of Barrett Wendell Jr.

View the original

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The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.