Peter Pelham

For the English-born American organist and composer, see Peter Pelham (composer).

Peter Pelham (/ˈpɛləm/; c. 1695 – December 1751) was an American portrait painter and engraver, born in England.

Peter Pelham
John Singleton Copley, Peter Pelham (?), c. 1753–1754, private collection
Born	c. 1695 London, Kingdom of England
Died	December 1751 (aged 55–56) Boston, Massachusetts, British America
Nationality	English
Education	John SImon
Known for	Mezzotint portraits
Spouses	Martha Guy ​ ​ (m. 1719; died 1729)​ Margaret Lowrey ​ ​ (m. 1734; died 1748)​ Mary (Singleton) Copley ​ ​ (m. 1748)​
Children	6, including Henry

Signature of Peter Pelham in the below engraving of Mather Byles

London

Born c. 1695 in London, Pelham was one of several London artists who learned the then new technique of the mezzotint engraving. Of his use of the medium one writer has said: "Pelham handled the rocker heavily, and so gave to his prints a darker appearance than usual". His father, who died in Chichester, Sussex, in 1756, is revealed in letters to his son in America as a man of some property.

He was well trained as a portrait painter, and had influential connections, and between 1720 and 1726 he produced portrait plates of Queen Anne, George I, the Earl of Derby, Lord Wilmington, Lord Carteret, Lord Molesworth, Edmund Gibson, and others. Why, amidst such engagements, Pelham should have emigrated is mysterious, if, as seems quite certain, the poor schoolmaster, limner and engraver of Boston, Massachusetts, is identical with the well-employed mezzotinter of London. It is possible that he left in disgrace. His portrait of Massachusetts Governor Samuel Shute, painted at London in 1724, was brought, according to plausible family tradition, to Boston to serve as introduction to local celebrities.

Boston

Though various dates for his emigration have been suggested, the record of Peter Pelham's activities at Boston is well established. His portrait of the Rev. Cotton Mather, now at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, was painted as copy for the very familiar mezzotint engraving, reproduced frequently. "Proposals" for printing this engraving were published in the Boston News-Letter on February 27, 1728. Portraits of several other New England clergymen followed. Pelham was seemingly intimate with John Smibert, who settled in Boston in 1730, for he painted Smibert's portrait and made several engravings after Smibert's works. Such professional labors did not produce a sufficient living for an ever-growing family, and Pelham opened a school at which he taught dancing, arithmetic, and other subjects. His first wife Martha dying in Boston, he married on October 15, 1734, Margaret Lowrey, and after her death he married, on May 22, 1748, Mary (Singleton) Copley, widow of Richard Copley, a recently deceased tobacconist originally from Limerick, Ireland. Their home, school, studio, and tobacco shop were on Queen Street (ca.1747) and Lindall Street. In this household were reared the future artists John Singleton Copley (son of Mary's first husband Richard Copley) and Henry Pelham. Peter Pelham died without a will.

Pelham's descendants included grandson William Pelham (1759-1827), a bookseller in Boston.

Gallery

Selected prints by Peter Pelham

• 
  John, Lord Carteret, c. 1720, after Godfrey Kneller, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• 
  Oliver Cromwell, 1723, after Robert Walker, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.
• 
  Edward Cooper, 1724, after Jan van der Vaart, British Museum, London
• 
  Cotton Mather, c. 1727–1728, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
• 
  Mather Byles, c. 1732-1739, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
• 
  William Shirley, 1747, after John Smibert, National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C.

Further reading

Primary sources

• Copley, John Singleton; Pelham, Henry (1914). Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739-1776. Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Vol. 71. Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society. OCLC 1048314507 – via the Internet Archive.
• Vertue, George (1934). "The Note-Books of George Vertue Relating to Artists and Collections in England (III)". The Walpole Society. 22. whole issue. JSTOR i40086509.

General studies

• Allison, Anne (December 1947). "Peter Pelham, Engraver in Mezzotinto". Antiques. 52: 441–443.
• Oliver, Andrew (1973). "Peter Pelham (c. 1697–1751), Sometimes Printmaker in Boston". In Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Boston (ed.). Boston Prints and Printmakers, 1670-1775 (conference papers). Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts. Vol. 46. Boston, Charlottesville: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, University Press of Virginia. pp. 133–173. OCLC 1028858792 – via the Internet Archive.

Additional notes

• Burke, Joseph (1976). English Art, 1714–1800. Oxford History of English Art. Vol. 9. Oxford: Clarendon Press. p. 178. ISBN 0-19-817209-5. OCLC 1150946106 – via the Internet Archive.
• Clayton, Timothy (1997). The English Print, 1688–1802. London, New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-06650-3.
• Frankenstein, Alfred (1970). The World of Copley, 1738–1815. Time-Life Library of Art. New York: Time-Life Books. OCLC 1036936244 – via the Internet Archive.
• Gohm, Douglas Charles (1978). Maps and Prints for Pleasure and Investment. London: Gifford. p. 38. ISBN 0-7071-0567-6. OCLC 1245546044 – via the Internet Archive.
• Hind, Arthur M. (1963). A History of Engraving & Etching from the 15th Century to the Year 1914 (3rd, fully rev. ed.). New York: Dover. pp. 270, 381, 389. OCLC 1035610203 – via the Internet Archive.
• Rebora, Carol; et al. (1995). John Singleton Copley in America (exhibition catalogue). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, H. N. Abrams. ISBN 0-87099-744-0. OCLC 1244862408 – via the Internet Archive.
• Saunders, Richard H. (1995). John Smibert: Colonial America's First Portrait Painter. New Haven, London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-04258-2. OCLC 31607421.
• Wax, Carol (1990). The Mezzotint: History and Technique. New York: H. N. Abrams. pp. 32, 91–96. ISBN 0-8109-3603-8 – via Google Books.

Reference books

• Barhill, Georgia Bardy (1996). "Pelham, Peter". In Turner, Jane (ed.). The Dictionary of Art. Vol. 24. New York: Grove's Dictionaries. p. 335. ISBN 1-884446-00-0. OCLC 1033638207 – via the Internet Archive.
• Barhill, Georgia Bardy (1999). "Pelham, Peter". In Garraty, John Arthur; Carnes, Marc Christopher (eds.). American National Biography. Vol. 17. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 262–263. ISBN 0-19-512796-X. OCLC 1028039693 – via the Internet Archive.
• Bénézit, Emmanuel (2006) [first published in French in 1911–1923]. Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Vol. 10. Paris: Gründ. p. 1093. ISBN 2-7000-3080-X – via the Internet Archive.
• Clayton, Timothy (2004). "Pelham, Peter". In Matthew, H. C. G.; Harrison, Brian (eds.). Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 43. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. p. 474. ISBN 0-19-861393-8. OCLC 1035754429 – via the Internet Archive.
• Coburn, Frederick W. (1934). "Pelham, Peter". In Malone, Dumas (ed.). Dictionary of American Biography. Vol. 14. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 409. OCLC 1043041678 – via the Internet Archive.
• Hind, Arthur M. (1963). A History of Engraving & Etching from the 15th Century to the Year 1914 (3rd, fully rev. ed.). New York: Dover. pp. 270. OCLC 1035610203 – via the Internet Archive.
• Smith, John Chaloner (1878–1884). British Mezzotinto Portraits. London: H. Sotheran. pt. 3, pp. 964–978. OCLC 679810041 – via the Internet Archive.
• Vollmer, Hans, ed. (1932). "Pelham, Peter". Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler (in German). Vol. 26. Leipzig: E. A. Seemann. p. 355.

External links

• http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Portraits/21.htm
• http://www.americanantiquarian.org/Inventories/Portraits/78.htm
• American paintings & historical prints from the Middendorf collection, an exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on Pelham (no. 54)