Artwork Details
- Title
- Matthias and Thomas Bordley
- Artist
- Date
- 1767
- Location
- Not on view
- Dimensions
- 3 5⁄8 x 4 1⁄8 in. (9.2 x 10.5 cm) oval
- Credit Line
- Museum purchase and gift of Mr. and Mrs. Murray Lloyd Goldsborough, Jr.
- Mediums
- Mediums Description
- watercolor on ivory
- Subjects
- Portrait male — Bordley, Thomas — waist length
- Portrait male — Bordley, Matthias — waist length
- Object — written matter — book
- Object — art object — sculpture
- Portrait group — family — siblings
- Recreation — leisure — reading
- Children
- Object Number
- 1974.113
Artwork Description
Charles Willson Peale’s tender portrait of Matthias and Thomas Bordley presents the young sons of John Beale Bordley, Peale’s early patron. This oval miniature is a reminder that such keepsakes were often painted to comfort the owner in the absence of the people portrayed. Bordley’s sons had just arrived in London to be educated at Eton, under the watchful eye of a family friend. Here, Peale shows them with a bust of Minerva, Roman goddess of wisdom, with a view of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background. Bordley had paid to send Peale to study in England, and during this trip the artist painted this miniature to give to the boys’ parents in Maryland. An inscription on the back indicates that Matthias was nine and his brother Thomas twelve years old when this was painted. Although Matthias would live to adulthood, Thomas died in England of tuberculosis in 1771.
