William Fitzhugh (1651-1701)

William Fitzhugh emigrated from England around 1670. He built a home at Eagle’s Nest and married Sarah Tucker. This portrait is known through a 1751 copy of it by the artist John Hesselius. The copy includes an inscription that recorded that the subject was “AEtatis 46” indicating that the portrait was painted in 1698. It was also recorded in the subject’s 1701 will. The artist was possibly the person that William Fitzhugh wanted to “set up” as a painter in 1698 when he ordered paintings supplies.

References: “I Give my son William my own & wife’s pictures & the other 6 Pictures of my Relations together,” in William Fitzhugh’s Will and Inventory, 1701

Ordered from England: “Six three quartered lacker book frames for pictures well burnished, About 40 or 50 shillings worth of colours for painting wt. pencils walnut Oyl & Linseed Oyl proportionable together with half a doz. 3 quarter clothes to set up a painter.” – William Fitzhugh to John Cooper, July 26, 1698

See: Richard Beale Davis, ed., William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, 1676–1701: The Fitzhugh Letters and Other Documents (1963), 366, 379; Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture (1986), 183-186.