James Pitts

Joseph Badger American, 1708-1765
On View

in

American, Level 2, West Wing

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About the Artwork

James Pitts

between 1750 and 1754

Joseph Badger

1708-1765

American

Unknown

Oil on canvas

Overall: 35 1/2 × 27 3/4 inches (90.2 × 70.5 cm)

Paintings

American Art before 1950

Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund

58.355

This work is in the public domain.

Markings

------

Provenance

by 1776, James Pitts (Boston, Massachusetts, USA)

his son, John Pitts (Tyngsborough, Massachussetts, USA)

his great-grandnephew, Thomas Pitts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Mrs. Thomas Pitts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

her son, S. Lendall Pitts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

Mrs. S. Lendall Pitts (Norfolk, Virginia, USA). 1958-present, purchase by the Detroit Institute of Arts (Detroit, Michigan, USA)

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Provenance page

Exhibition History

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Published References

Goodwin, D. Life and Services of James Pitts and his Sons. Chicago, 1881, pp. 2, 33.

Goodwin, D. Provincial Pictures by Brush and Pen. Chicago, 1886, pp. 15-16.

Park, Lawrence. “An Account of Joseph Badger and a Descriptive List of his Work.” Massachusetts Historical Proceedings 51 (December 1917): p. 187.

_____________. Joseph Badger. Boston, 1918, pp. 32. [Park identifies sitter as James rather than John]

Richardson, E.P. “American Painting.” Bulletin of the DIA 14, 1 (October 1934): pp. 11-12.

Foote, Henry Wilder. John Simbert, Painter. Cambridge, MA, 1950, p. 183.

Portraits of Eight Generations of the Pitts Family from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Centuries. Exh. cat., Detroit Institute of Arts. Detroit, 1959, pp. 11, 18-19. [as John Pitts; NOTE: identity of sitter late disputed]

Payne, Elizabeth. “Pitts Family Portraits of the Eighteenth Century.” Antiques 77 (January 1960): p. 88.

American Paintings in the Detroit Institute of Arts, Volume 1: Works by Artists Born Before 1816. New York, 1991, p. 27, no. 6 (ill.).

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Catalogue Raisoneé

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Credit Line for Reproduction

Joseph Badger, James Pitts, between 1750 and 1754, oil on canvas. Detroit Institute of Arts, Founders Society Purchase, Gibbs-Williams Fund, 58.355.

James Pitts
James Pitts