Landscape with Coat of Arms

Details

Descriptive Terms

landscapes (representations)
paintings (visual works)
oil paint (paint)
panels (wood)
panel paintings (painting by form)
Painting
Painting, Panel
Painting, Panel

Label

"Cherished Possessions": These two landscape panels, and the floor panel to the left, came out of one of the most opulent rooms ever built in New England. The Clark-Frankland House in Boston's North End was so ornate that even more than a hundred years after it was built, one visitor described: “pictorial and architectural splendor [that] so captivated us as to induce repeated visits.” The house was built in 1712 for William Clark (d. 1742), a member of the Governor's Council and one of Boston's wealthiest merchants. The panels may well have been painted by John Gibbs, an apprentice in the London Painter-Stainers guild in the 1690s who had arrived in Boston by 1703. It is unlikely there were more than one or two craftsmen with the skill to create these panels working in Boston in the second decade of the eighteenth century.

Associated Building

Subject Clark-Frankland House,

Maker

Gibbs, John

Dimensions

68 5/8 x 37 x 2 (HxWxD) (inches)

Credit Line

Museum Purchase

Accession Number

1984.478.1

Places

Massachusetts (United States)
Boston (Suffolk county, Massachusetts)