Fresh out of storage and hung in the dining room for the new season is an engraving of William Pitt, the younger (1759-1806). William Pitt, the younger (1759-1806) was a gifted statesman and in 1783 when he was 24 became the youngest British prime minister. Annapolis artist Charles Willson Peale painted the subject’s father, William Pitt, the elder (1708-1778), Pitt did not sit for the young painter. Instead, Peale used a sculpture of him carved by Joseph Wilton as his model. During Peale’s time in England studying with Benjamin West, Peale befriended London-based lawyer Edmund Jennings, who was the younger half-brother of his primary Annapolis patron John Beale Bordley. Jennings gave Peale one of his first major commissions. He asked Peale to paint William Pitt the elder, the famous defender of American resistance to the Stamp Act. Jennings intended the portrait as a gift for the gentlemen of Westmoreland County, Virginia. This painting is now at the Westmoreland County Museum in Virginia. A second painting by Peale of Pitt hangs in the Maryland State House.
Both William Pitts, father and son, were popular with the Americans and prints like this one would make a great addition to the homes of citizens of the new republic who were proud to be American yet admired their British heritage.
This print of William Pitt, the younger, was donated in 1947 by Winifred Gordon, one of the founders of the Hammond-Harwood House Association. A talented artist, she also painted a copy of Charles Willson Peale’s portrait of Hammond-Harwood House architect William Buckland. The original is at Yale University Art Gallery.
William Pitt The Younger (1759-1806), London, c. 1810
Artist: Thomas Bragg (1754-1840), English, after John Hoppner (1758-1810), English
Medium: Engraving
P8 Donated by Winifred Gordon in 1947
