Artist: Gawen Hamilton (1697?-1737)

Click on  image for more information about the principal sitter.

Title: The Sharpe Family
Date:
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 58 x 71"
Accession number: MSA SC 1545-1212
 

Governor Horatio Sharpe was provincial governor of Maryland from 1753 to 1768. During his tenure as governor, he rented Jennings House, which stood on land
that is now part of the U.S. Naval Academy and became the home of Maryland's governors until the present Government House was built in 1870. Governor
Sharpe also built Whitehall, one of the finest Georgian homes in the country, as his private residence. Whitehall was designed by Joseph Horatio Anderson, who was also the architect of the Maryland State House.

In this group family portrait, called a "conversation portrait," fifteen figures are depicted. Governor Sharpe is the second figure from the left, wearing a scarlet
waistcoat. In addition, three other figures have been identified as Sharpe's brothers Joshua, William, and Gregory. (Joshua is the figure on the far left leaning on the
chair; William is fifth from the left holding a snuffbox; and Gregory is in clerical dress.) The painting was once installed as a panel in the dining room of Brockley Hall,
the family home of William Sharpe (Horatio's brother).

This unsigned portrait has been the subject of much study in the past with regard to its attribution, and for many years was published as the work of the great English
artist William Hogarth (1697-1764). Exhibited throughout England during the first half of the twentieth century as a Hogarth, the date of the painting was generally
believed to be circa 1753, just before the departure of Horatio Sharpe to take up his duties in Maryland. The painting was offered for sale to the State of Maryland
by the Vose Galleries of Boston in 1951. Dorothy Byron Lane, wife of Governor William Preston Lane, paid for its purchase out of a surplus in the
Government House household account. At that time, when many Hogarth attributions were being reevaluated, The Sharpe Family was reattributed to Gawen
Hamilton, a contemporary of Hogarth also known for his conversation portraits.

This attribution has remained with the painting since then, however, the traditional date of 1753 is subsequently called into question considering that this postdates
Hamilton's death by sixteen years. Further scholarship is required to revisit the Hamilton attribution and the possibility of an earlier date for the painting.

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