John Hesselius

(b ?Philadelphia, PA, 1728; d Anne Arundel Co., MD, 9 April 1778). Son of (1) Gustavus Hesselius. Records suggest that he was trained by his father, but there is little evidence of Gustavus’s influence in his work. He was one of the leading portrait painters in the Middle Colonies in the third quarter of the 18th century. His lack of European training was possibly responsible for his unaffected attitude towards painting, which allowed him, unlike his contemporaries, to carry his interpretation of the Rococo portrait style to a middle-class, rather than powerful and wealthy, clientele. More eclectic than creative throughout most of his career, Hesselius is important for his reflection and improvement on the imported styles of others. He relied on the European mezzotint prints then popular in the Colonies for the composition and fashion detail in his works; his earliest known works are virtually coloured copies of these prints. He expressed himself primarily through line and colour, but in this too he was often influenced by others.This biography from the archives of AskART.com.Born to a Swedish family, he became one of the leading portrait painters in the Mid-Atlantic colonies. He first studied with his father, a painter of portraits and religious subjects. The family lived in Philadelphia where he saw the work of Robert Feke. "Charles Calvert", owned by the Baltimore Museum of Art is his most famous portrait. It is of a 5 year old child posed as a general of troops. Nearly 100 portraits survive, and it is thought that he also painted religious and classical subjects. He married a wealthy woman from Annapolis and lived as a country gentleman on their estate. He was the teacher of Charles Willson Peale. In Virginia, he was regarded as the "court painter" of the Fitzhugh family, one of the founding families of Virginia, and he did portraits of five generations of that family.