Rev250MHD: Portraits of 18th-century Marblehead People Before the Storm of Revolution

On Sunday afternoon, November 3rd, at 1 pm at the Marblehead Arts Association’s King Hooper Mansion, an illustrated talk will bring those enigmatic individuals from Marblehead’s late colonial past to life.

In most communities before American independence, portraits of only a very few individuals were painted, and even fewer survive. But, surprisingly, two dozen portraits of members of the Lee and Hooper families exist, all in major museums, along with about a dozen others from Marblehead at the town’s peak in the 1760s –– most of them by the absolute best portraitist in colonial America, John Singleton Copley.

It is perplexing that while portraits of half of King Hooper’s children (as adults) were painted, none of the offspring of Colonel Lee and his wife Martha are known.

Among those Hooper family portraits is a likeness by Copley acquired relatively recently (for a Copley portrait) by the Milwaukee Art Museum which has long been said to portray one of King Hooper’s four daughters. More intriguingly, it might actually instead honor King Hooper’s second and principal wife of 28 years, Ruth Swett, the mother of all 11 of the “King’s” children, who is virtually unknown and under-appreciated today. Her name is the same as the young Hooper’s first wife, who had died at about age 20 when Robert was 23, before they had any children.

Looking regally serene, on the eve of a turbulent and disastrous time for Marblehead, this middle-aged Marblehead woman radiates subdued luxury and grace, but also mystery –– much like the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

Soon after, the American colonies would be forged into a new nation by eight years of war, followed by a half decade of contention about governing laws for the new nation. The character of that divide still persists, 250 years later. But so does the country that was born two and a half centuries ago, on the backs of so many, including nearly everyone in Marblehead’s thousand families at that time.

The presentation is part of a multi-year series of programming in Marblehead and beyond that commemorates the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. Attendance is free, but donations to the Arts Association are encouraged.