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Fine and Decorative Arts At the Hammond-Harwood House, Annapolis, Maryland

  Chinese Export Porcelain Bowl
   Date:  Last quarter of the 18th century.   Kindly donated by the Tylers  of 
   Annapolis, Maryland.  
   Size: 5  1/2" in high,  13  1/2" diameter, base 7  1/4".

The bowl was said to have been a part of the cargo on board the doomed Peggy Stewart, a vessel which was burned by a riotous colonial crowd in Annapolis's harbor on October 14, 1774.  Prior to the destruction of the ship, the bowl was reportedly presented to loyalist Lloyd Dulany.  Dulany's house was located at the corner of what are now Main and Conduit Streets in downtown Annapolis.  Feeling the pressures of Revolutionary politics, Dulany and his family fled to England.  Soon after the War, thousands of acres of Dulany's  properties  were confiscated and sold.  George Mann purchased the old Dulany house in downtown Annapolis and turned the mansion into Mann's Hotel [later known as   the City Hotel].   In the 19th century, Col. John Walton and his son became the proprietors   of this hospitable establishment.  Ownership of the City Hotel, essentially, passed down through several generation of the Walton family.  It is presumed that the Chinese Export Porcelain bowl was part of Dulany's confiscated property and, hence, part of the lot of goods which became the decor of the City Hotel.

  Female Member of the Middleton Family
  Artist:  John Hesselius (1728-1778)
  Date: 1760s - 1770s
  Size: 29 7/8" in high x 25" in wide

On loan to the Hammond-Harwood House until summer of 2010, the mysterious Mrs. Middleton is a welcome addition to our collection.  Mrs. Middleton was painted by John Hesselius, a second generation artist, whose family was of Swedish descent.  Hesselius's name begins appearing in documents as early as the 1740s, but his career as a portraitist did not truly prosper until he was introduced to the Fitzhugh family of Virginia.  Over 15 years, Hesselius painted 6 portraits for the family, and it was under their patronage that the artist began to develop a distinctive style.   Hesselius traveled throughout the middle colonies, but settled in Annapolis in the 1760s, even becoming a member of the St. Anne's Parish vestry.  By the time of his death in 1778, Hesselius had accrued 900 acres and 31 slaves.  His estate, a true measure of Hesselius' artistic, scientific, and musical interests,  contained landscapes pictures, fruit images, boxes with paints, brushes, and "Painters Utensils," religious imagery, "family pictures,"  violins, a harpsichord, a German flute, a magnifying glass, a prism, a magnet, and other accoutrements of a very intellectually curious  man.

Unknown Man & 3 Females                                                      Artist:  Possibly James Sharples Date:  Early 19th Century Size:  7" wide x 9" high

This lovely pastel portrait was recently discovered taped to the reverse side of a pencil sketch.  Because of a thick mat board used to back the sketch, this portrait may have been unknown to those who purchased the pencil drawing in 1951.  National Portrait Gallery experts speculate that the cartoon on the other side of the pastel may be significantly earlier than this image of an aged man.  Indeed, while the pastel probably dates from 1805 -1820, the cartoon (depicting a mother and two children) may date from the 1780s.  This wide date range is somewhat puzzling, but the name of the artist himself seems less ambiguous.   Here, scholars have  found a number of similarities with the portraits executed by James Sharples in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.   Sharples [and the his family]  frequently worked in pastel, drafting detailed sketches in pencil and then filling the lines in with brilliant pastel color.  The Sharples' family portraits can also be characterized by the use of a sometimes vibrant blue background, by the small gray/blue paper on which the  images were drawn, and by the sensative depictions of the sitters' expression.  Both of these wonderful images are currently being preserved.