John May (1748-1812), 1789

| Christian Gullager (1759-1826)
| oil on canvas
| 30 1/8 x 25 1/8 (76.52 x 63.82)
| signed, l.r.: ‘C. Gullager Pinx. 1789’
| Bequest of Mary Davenport May and Charlotte Augusta May, 1874
| Weis 85

Ex. Coll.: Sitter; to his wife Abigail May; to their daughters, the donors.

Exhibitions:
1921-22, ‘Loan Exhibition of English and American Paintings of
the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1929, ‘Exhibition of American Eighteenth Century Art Owned in
and Near Worcester,’ Worcester Art Museum, no. 308.
1943, ‘The Art of Colonial America in the Early Republic,’ Vose
Art Gallery, Boston.
1949, ‘Christian Gullager,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1971, ‘Early American Paintings from the Collections of the
Worcester Art Museum and the American Antiquarian Society,’ Worcester Art Museum.
1975, ‘The Face of Liberty,’ Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth,
Texas.
1976, ‘Christian Gullager: Portrait Painter to Federal America,’ National Portrait Gallery.
1977, ‘Wellsprings of a Nation,’ Worcester Art Museum.

Publications:
Alan Burroughs, Limners and Likenesses (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1936), 93, 98, no. 74.
Louisa Dresser, ‘Christian Gullager,’ Art in America 37 (July 1949): 148-49.
Dresser, 1969, 723.
William Dunlap, ed., A History of the Rise and Progress of the Arts of Design in the United States, 3 vols. (Boston: C. E. Goodspeed & Co., 1918), 3: 305.
James T. Flexner, The Face of Liberty (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1975), plate 71.
Marvin Sadik, Christian Gullager: Portrait Painter to Federal America (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 1976), 56-57, plate 5.
Dwight Smith, The Western Journals of John May (Cincinnati: Historical and Philosophical Society of Ohio, 1961), frontispiece.

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