Exhibition Label, 1997
Before settling in New England for a decade (1753-63), Joseph Blackburn visited Bermuda, which had come under British domination in 1684 and was closely connected to the American mainland by trade routes. Here he painted at least seventeen portraits, seven devoted to the members of the family of Francis Jones, governor of the colony. Fannie, Francis Jones’s daughter, married Captain John Pigott by, a customs collector, in 1745. The British considered Bermuda an exotic locale, as Blackburn shows in this portrait of Mrs. Pigott by posing her in front of a palmetto with a small native bird perched on her finger.
This painting, along with the one of John Pigott to the right, remained in the Jones family until acquired by the museum; consequently, the frames are original eighteenth-century examples of the English rococo aesthetic, with sand panels and lacy, open carving decorated with fine and floret details.
