Lot 27: Attributed to JOSEPH BADGER (1708-1763)

Portrait of Isaac Jones, circa 1756 oil on canvas 38 3/8x28 5/8in. PROVENANCE Isaac Jones (1738-1812) Dr. Sydney Ponce (son) Dr. Charles S. Goodrich (grandson of Isaac Jones, received from Dr. Ponce, 1835) Benjamin S. Brooks (grandson of Isaac Jones, received from Dr. Goodrich, 1877) Isobel Brooks Dorn (great-granddaughter of Benjamin S. Brooks) Present Owners LITERATURE F. Lanier Graham, Three Centuries of American Painting from the Collection of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor (San Francisco, 1971), p. 4, catalogue 4. EXHIBITION San Francisco, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, Three Centuries of American Painting from the Collection of the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum and the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1971. This painting has been on loan to the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum, San Francisco, since 1958. NOTES Isaac Jones was born in New Haven, CT in 1738. A member of the Yale College Class of 1757, this portrait, according to tradition, was painted circa 1756; if true, the portrait may have attended Jones's completion of his studies at Yale. The son of Timothy Jones, also of New Haven, Isaac went on to marry Sibyl Benjamin of Stratford, CT, on 23 January 1774. Isaac and Sibyl Jones had eight children. Isaac Jones died on 18 May 1812, and is buried in the Grove Street Cemetery, New Haven, CT. According to family lore, Jones was a noted Whig during the War for American Independence. When the British, led by General William Tryon raided the Danbury area in late April 1777, the portrait was alleged to have been run through by a British sword. While there is no specific surviving record of Isaac Jones travelling to Boston, Joseph Badger is known to have worked entirely in the Boston area (see Saunders and Miles, American Colonial Portraits, 1700-1776 (Washington, D.C., 1987), p. 191). Nonetheless, the possibility exists that Jones did travel from New Haven to Boston where he might have sat for this portrait. For other similar contemporary portraits by Badger see, Cassius Hunt and Mrs. Cassius Hunt in Shadwell and Strunsky, Catalogue of American Portraits in The New-York Historical Society (New York, 1974), pp. 372-373, figs. 972 and 973. See also, James Bowdoin I in Sadik, Colonial and Federal Portraits at Bowdoin College, (Brunswick, Me., 1966), p. 22.