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The Freake Painter

© Anne Douglas

Author’s commentary: This is a biography of an unknown artist. In the interest of brevity, I refer to the Freake Painter with the masculine pronoun. I choose to do this because the Freake Painter was probably a man, although I recognize that, as Mirra Bank pointed out some years ago, often Anonymous Was a Woman.

By 1664 Boston was a thriving port city, with several hundred merchant ships in the harbor and a population of 14,300 citizens. The Calvinist principles of piety and industry – upon which so much of early American society was based – fostered the belief that prosperity was a sign of God’s approval. As the colonists’ lives improved and fortunes increased, so did an interest in worldly comforts and goods. While the first settlers had to manage to survive in the “howling wilderness,” within just 30 or 40 years their descendents and later immigrants were able to build fine homes and purchase comfortable furnishings, decorative jewelry, and fashionable clothing. Portraits of the master of the house and his wife were increasingly desirable as emblems of public stature and divine support.

Although interest in portraits grew, however, there was little appreciation for the artists who painted them. There were about 14 artists working in Boston in the seventeenth century, but they were regarded as craftsmen, much like carpenters, blacksmiths, or tailors; even their names have been forgotten, while the names of their subjects survive. A portraitist in 17th-century Boston would have earned a living by painting signs or furniture, in addition to the occasional portrait.

Today art historians know of about 40 portraits that were probably painted in or around Boston before 1700. About 10 of these share enough similarities that they are believed to have been painted by the same person. Because two of the portraits – John Freake and Elizabeth Clarke Freake (Mrs. John Freake) and Baby Mary – are now considered masterpieces of early American art, the artist has come to be called the Freake Painter.

Identifying a group of unsigned paintings as the work of a single artist can be tricky, and probably no one will ever be able to say for certain that the Freake Painter did indeed create all the pictures attributed to him. Most of the Freake Painter portraits are about the same size, 42 x 36 inches, and there are similarities in the colors and application of paint. His portraits of children are full-length, while his portraits of adults are three-quarter or half-length. Most of the sitters hold a single object to symbolize their stations in life: a minister grips a Bible, a gentleman carries gloves, a young girl holds a flower. The sitters in the Freake Painter’s portraits seem flat and weightless. Decorative elements like lace and jewelry are rendered with elaborate detail. These characteristics – flat, linear, decorative – are typical of Elizabethan style and were common in English art of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Scholars now believe that the Freake Painter was probably an English-born and trained artist who emigrated to New England.

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