Francis Brinley
1729
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
50 x 39 1/4 in. (127 x 99.7 cm)
Classification
Painting
Culture
American
Department
The American Wing
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Rogers Fund, 1962
Accession Number
62.79.1
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the elegant world of portraiture with John Smibert's *Francis Brinley* (1729), a oil-on-canvas painting now housed in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's American Wing. Smibert, a Scottish-born artist who arrived in America that very year as part of George Berkeley's Bermuda expedition, quickly established himself as one of the colonies' first professional painters. This life-size portrait (50 x 39¼ inches) captures Francis Brinley, a Newport merchant, in a poised, three-quarter-length pose that exudes quiet confidence and social standing. Painted in the tradition of English Baroque po...