Portraiture and the Atlantic World

Portraiture was the most popular artistic genre of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, serving the political, economic, and social needs of patrons throughout the Atlantic World—from Spanish Colonial officials and American Revolutionary war heroes to small-town shopkeepers and rural families. Expanded trade and travel created networks of exchange as artists, objects, ideas, and cultural practices spread across the Atlantic, connecting the Old World with the New and New England with New Spain. The works in this gallery represent the connections between diverse artists and patrons in this period, revealing the development of portraiture as a shared cultural endeavor.