Robert Bolling (1646-1709)

Robert Bolling emigrated from England in 1660. His first wife was Jane Rolfe, his second wife was Anne Stith. He lived at Kippax Plantation near Petersburg. His portrait likely hung there originally before the subject’s death. It descended with other Bolling family portraits associated with the Bolling family that lived at Cobbs Plantation, also near Petersburg. The portrait was painted in England, probably around 1690.

Dimensions: 29 x 24 in. (73.66 x 60.96 cm.)

The subject wears a dark wig, dark robes embroidered with gold and fastened with a jewel, and a heavily laced cravat. He is inside of a painted oval.

See: Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 67; Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture (1987), 187-190.