Henry Fitzhugh (1687-1758)

Henry Fitzhugh was the son of William Fitzhugh (1651-1701) the immigrant and Sarah Tucker Fitzhugh. His wife was Susanna Cooke Fitzhugh. This portrait by John Hesselius is a copy of the portrait Hesselius painted in 1751 to hang at Bedford. This copy was commissioned by John Fitzhugh (1727-1809), the subject’s younger son, of Belle Air Plantation.

Dimensions: 32 x 27 in. (81.28 x 68.58 cm.)

The subject wears a blue jacket and matching waistcoat. He also wear a white wig is angled toward his right. He appears inside of a painted oval frame. Inscribed on back: “Cap Henry Fitzhugh/ Son of/ Coll Will Fitzhugh/ AEtat 70/ 1756/ [J Hefselius] Pinx”

See: Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 256-259; Richard K. Doud, “The Fitzhugh Portraits by John Hesselius,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 75, no. 2 (April 1967): 159-173.