Lot 83: Portrait of Mary Dudley Wainwright Atkins

John Smibert (1688-1751) Portrait of Mary Dudley Wainwright Atkins oil on canvas 30 1/8x25 1/4 in. painted February 1730

This portrait from a Newburyport, Massachusetts estate bore a label stating that the sitter was Mary Dudley Wainwright Atkins (1692-1774). A "Mrs. Wainwright HP 3/4" is listed in Smibert's notebook now in the Public Records Office, London. In Richard Saunder's John Smibert, Colonial America's First Portrait Painter, (New Haven and London, 1995), the portrait is listed under Unlocated Works number 454. The subject is listed as possibly Mary Dudley Wainwright, twelfth daughter of Governor Joseph Dudley, sister of William Dudley and was first married to Francis Wainwright (Harvard, 1701; d. 1722), a Boston Merchant and then to Captain Joseph Atkins of the British Navy, April, 1730. Saunders further references authors Sibley and Shipton 1873-1956, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, in Cambridge Massachusetts vol. 5, p. 406, that notes the painting "was some years ago in the possession of Mrs. Mary Curzon of Curzon Mill, Newburyport."