Mather Byles, Sr. (1706/7-88), 1765-67

| John Singleton Copley (1738-1815)
| oil on canvas
| 24 1/4 x 27 1/2 (61.60 x 69.85)
| Gift of Josephine Spencer Gay, 1923
| Weis 24

Ex. Coll.: Sitter; in 1784 sent to Mather Byles, Jr. (cat. 23), Halifax, Nova Scotia; sometime in the nineteenth century to Mather Byles DesBrisay; sold at ‘Hon. M. B. DesBrisay Collection Sale,’ C. F. Libbie & Co., April 4, 1908 to Frederick L. Gay; to his wife, the donor.

Exhibitions:
1930, ‘One Hundred Colonial Portraits,’ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1936, ‘Tercentenary Exhibition,’ Harvard University.
1943, ‘New England Painting, 1700-1775,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1971, ‘Early American Paintings from the Collections of the Worcester Art Museum and the American Antiquarian Society,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1976, ‘Harvard Divided,’ Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University, no. 20.

Publications:
Linda Ayers, Harvard Divided (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1976), 51-52.
Franklin P. Cole, Mather Books and Portraits through Six Generations (Portland, Maine: Casco Printing, 1978), 198.
Arthur W. H. Eaton, The Famous Mather Byles (Boston: W. A. Butterfield, 1914), 196.
Barbara Neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, John Singleton Copley (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1938), 55-56, plate 62.
Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 33 (1923): 291-96.
Jules David Prown, John Singleton Copley in America (Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1966), plate 199.

 

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