called Richard Lee II (1647-1714/15)

This portrait is identified as Richard Lee II by family tradition since at least 1790. The portrait descended in the Lee family at Stratford Hall (built ca. 1730s-40s). Richard Lee II was the son of Richard Lee I and Ann Constable Lee. He married Laetitia Corbin, daughter of Henry Corbin and Alice Corbin. He lived at Machodoc Plantation, which was burned down in 1729. Following the fire, Thomas Lee, Richard Lee’s son, built Stratford. If this is the original portrait, it survived the 1729 fire.

References: Richard Lee II’s inventory of personal property includes: “in the hall, Richard Lee’s picture, frame and curtain, G. Corbin’s picture, the Quaker’s picture, T. Corbin’s picture.”

“Stratford whose delightful shades formed the comfort and retirement of my wise and Philosophic grandfather with what a mixture of awe and pious gratification did it afford me sitting on one of the sophas of the great Hall, to trace the family resemblance in the portraits of all my dear mother’s forefathers–her father & mother grandfather & grandmother and so upwards for four generations! Their pictures have been drawn by the most eminent English artists and in large gilt frames adorn one of the most spacious & beautiful Halls I have seen.” from Thomas Lee Shippen to William Shippen, 29 September 1790. Shippen Family Papers.

Dimensions: Dimensions: 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm.)

The subject wears a dark robe over a blue shirt or jacket. He wears a dark wig and appears inside a painted oval frame.

See: Edmund Jennings Lee, ed. Lee of Virginia, 1642-1892: Biographical and Genealogical Sketches of The Descendants of Colonel Richard Lee (Philadelphia, 1895), 81; Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture (1986), 190-193.