Lucy Grymes (1742-1830), John Randolph Grymes (1747-1796), Philip Ludwell Grymes (1746-1805), and Charles Grymes (b. 1748); also known as the Grymes Children

This portrait represents four children of Philip Grymes and Mary Randolph Grymes of Brandon in Middlesex County. The artist is unknown. It is often attributed to John Hesselius or his father, Gustavus Hesselius, although Gustavus is not recorded as working in Virginia. It is possibly another artist altogether.

Dimensions: 56 x 66 in. (142.24 x 167.64 cm.)

Lucy, the eldest girl, appears to sit on a stone bench on the far left side of the painting. She wears a blue dress and white apron filled with cherries. John, the second eldest son, wears a red gown with silver frogs and buttons and a blue jacket. A tricorn hat is tucked under his left arm and filled with cherries. He drops more cherries into Lucy’s apron with his right hand. Philip, the eldest son, wears a brown jacket and pants with a silver embroidered waistcoat and pulls his youngest brother, Charles, in a two wheel wagon. Charles wears a white gown and holds a whip while sitting in a wagon. They are all outdoors in a garden landscape with a classical structure on the left, a balustrade on the right with an urn, a castle structure in the distance, and a large burdock plant in the lower right corner.

See: Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 103-105.