Cotton Mather (1663-1728), 1727

| Peter Pelham (1697-1751)
| oil on canvas
| 35 1/4 x 30 1/4 (89.54 x 76.84) (framed)
| Gift of Josephine Spencer Gay, 1923
| Weis 77

Ex. Coll.: Sitter; to his nephew Mather Byles, Sr. (cats. 21-22); to his daughters Catherine and Mary Byles in 1788; passed solely to Catherine in 1832; through the family until 1908, when it was sold at the ‘Hon. M[ather] [Byles] DesBrisay Collection Sale,’ C. F. Libbie & Co., April 4, 1908, to Frederick L. Gay; to his widow, the donor.

Exhibitions:
1930, ‘One Hundred Colonial Portraits,’ Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
1936, ‘Tercentenary Exhibition,’ Harvard University.
1939-40, ‘Life in America for Three Hundred Years,’ Metropolitan Museum of Art.
1943, ‘New England Painting, 1770-1775,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1949, ‘From Colony to Nation,’ Art Institute of Chicago, no. 94.
1971, ‘Early American Paintings from the Collections of the
Worcester Art Museum and the American Antiquarian Society,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1977, ‘Wellsprings of a Nation,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1992, ‘Days of Judgement: The Salem Witch Trials of 1692,’ Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts.

Publications:
Catalog of the Tercentenary Exhibition (Cambridge: Harvard University, 1936), plate 8.
Dresser, 1969, 720.
From Colony to Nation (Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1949), 63.
One Hundred Colonial Portraits (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts), 56.
William Sprague, Annals of the American Pulpit, 9 vols. (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1859), 1: frontispiece. Engraving by A. H. Ritchie.

 

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