Abigail Adams
Portrait, pastel on paper by Benjamin Blyth, circa 1766
57 cm x 44.3 cm; in frame: 68 cm x 55.2 cm
Benjamin Blyth of Salem, Mass. painted this portrait of Abigail Smith Adams in 1766, shortly after her marriage to John Adams, later a founding father and the second president of the United States. The two married on 25 October 1764 and lived in Braintree (now Quincy), Mass. This portrait and the companion portrait of John are the earliest known likenesses of the couple. Blyth, a self-taught artist, would have been just twenty years old when he painted the Adamses on one of their visits to Salem. Like this one, all of Blyth’s surviving portraits were done in pastel crayon.
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