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Colonel James Fraser of Belladrum (1732-1808)

Colonel James Fraser of Belladrum (1732-1808)

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Henry Raeburn

Henry Raeburn was the most prominent Scottish artist working in Edinburgh in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His family engaged in the West Indies trade, importing sugar and other raw materials produced by enslaved people on Caribbean plantations. Many of Raeburn’s patrons were business connections similarly engaged in trade. Following a career in the British military, Colonel James Fraser was an early Scottish investor in the colonies of Demerara and Berbice in South America. He and his sons operated cotton plantations with enslaved laborers. Around the time Fraser sat for his portrait, the family used profits from their plantations to redecorate their Scottish estate house at Belladrum. Fraser may have commissioned this portrait as part of a larger project to show off the family’s wealth and gentility through their house and furnishings.
Artist
Henry Raeburn
(Scottish, 1756 - 1823)
Title
Colonel James Fraser of Belladrum (1732-1808)
Date
1800-1808
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
30 x 25 in. Overall
Credit
Gift of Earl Morse
Accession No.
63.2.1
Classification
Paintings
Geography
Scotland

Related

<span>Unknown date, Miss M. J. Fraser (Inverness, Scotland); Unknown date, acquired by Howard Young (London, England); 29 June 1937, purchased jointly by Howard Young (London, England) and M. Knoedler &amp; Co. (New York, NY); 31 January 1948, sold by M. Knoedler &amp; Co. (New York, NY) to Mary Louise Kirman [Mrs. Sidney A. Kirkman] (New York, NY); 15-16 October 1954, sold at Parke-Bernet (New York, NY) auction "18th Century English, American, and French Antiques From the Collection of the late Mr. and Mrs. Sidney A. Kirkman" [lot 409] to Earl Morse (New York, NY); November 1962, gifted to The University of Wisconsin-Madison; 1967, transferred to the Elvehjem Art Center [now called Chazen Museum of Art]</span>

  • Chazen Museum of Art. "re:mancipation." Madison, WI: Chazen Museum of Art, 2024. pp. 77, 79, 81, 127

  • re:mancipation: Chazen Museum of Art, 2/6/2023–6/25/2023
  • Three Centuries of British Painting: Milwaukee Art Institute, 10/18/1945–12/1/1945
  • Development of Portraiture: Walters Art Gallery, 2/24/1945–5/1/1945
  • Six Centuries of Portrait Masterpieces: Milwaukee Art Institute, 10/2/1942–11/15/1942
  • Title unknown, [Joslyn Memorial Gallery], 1940: Joslyn Memorial Gallery

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