Gabriel Steele (1683-1738), c. 1728

| John Watson (1685-1768)
| plumbago and wash on vellum
| 3 9/16 x 2 1/2 (9.05 x 5.08)
| inscribed, on verso: ‘Gabl. Stele [sic]/1728’
| Gift of John Hill Morgan, 1942
| Weis 106

Ex. Coll.: Early ownership unknown; in the nineteenth century owned by William Whitehead (1810-84); to his granddaughters Margaret Van Cortland Whitehead and Penelope Parker Whitehead; sold in 1942 to the donor. 1

Exhibitions:
1987, ‘American Colonial Portraits, 1700-1776,’ National Portrait Gallery, no. 23.

Publications:
John Hill Morgan, ‘Further Notes on John Watson,’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 52 (October 1942): opp. 134.
Richard H. Saunders and Ellen G. Miles, American Colonial Portraits, 1700-1776 (Washington, D.C.: National Portrait Gallery, 1987), 130-31.

1. The donor surmised the early provenance of this miniature to be as follows: artist to his niece Sophia Watson Terrill; to her daughter Sophia Waterhouse Brown (d. 1837); to her friend Maria Forbes; to her sister Elizabeth Forbes Benton; to William Whitehead. (See John Hill Morgan, ‘Further Notes on John Watson,’ Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 52 [October 1942]: 134-35.)

 

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