Mather Byles, Sr. (1706/7-88), c. 1732

| Peter Pelham (1697-1751)
| oil on canvas
| 33 1/4 x 28 (97.15 x 71.12) (framed)
| Gift of Josephine Spencer Gay, 1923
| Weis 23

Ex. Coll.: Sitter; to his daughters Catherine and Mary Byles, 1788; passed to Catherine, 1832; willed to the Reverend Mather Byles DesBrisay; sold at ‘Hon. M. B. DesBrisay Collection Sale,’ C. F. Libbie & Co., April 4, 1908 to Frederick L. Gay (1856-1916); to his wife, the donor.

Exhibitions:
1830, Boston Athenaeum, as ‘Dr. Byles at the Age of 24,’ loaned by Catherine Byles, no. 219.
1943, ‘New England Painting, 1700-1775,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1975, ‘Paul Revere’s Boston,’ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1987, ‘American Colonial Portraits,’ National Portrait Gallery.

Publications:
Franklin P. Cole, Mather Books and Portraits (Portland, Maine: Casco Printing, 1978), 182.
Dresser, 1969, 720.
Arthur W. H. Eaton, The Famous Mather Byles (Boston: W. A. Butterfield, 1914), 58.
Edward A. Jones, Loyalists of Massachusetts (London: St. Catherine’s Press, 1930), plate 8 [misidentified as Mather Byles, Jr.].
Richard H. Saunders and Ellen G. Miles, American Colonial Portraits (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 1987), 136-7, pl. 26.
Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, s.v. ‘Byles, Mather, Sr.’
Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, 4 vols. (Boston: Ticknor & Co., 1881), 2: 228.

 

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