2-991-609 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Portrait of Fannie Pigott, Mrs. John Pigott, between 1740 and 1763. Joseph Blackburn visited Bermuda, which had come under British domination in 1684 and was closely connected to the American mainland by trade routes. Here he painted at least seventeen portraits, seven devoted to the members of the family of Francis Jones, governor of the colony. Fannie, Francis Jones’s daughter, married Captain John Pigott by, a customs collector, in 1745. The British considered Bermuda an exotic locale, as Blackburn shows in this portrait of Mrs. Pigott by posing her in front of a palmetto with a small native bird perched on her finger. Fannie Pigott wears pearls and an elegant silver satin gown accompanied by a gauzy pink-and-white plaid silk shawl. The delineation of such luxurious materials was Blackburn’s specialty and demonstrated his training with in the English rococo aesthetic.