Oil on canvas, printed paper label on verso, " Tilden Thurber Co./ Art Gallery/Providence, R.I./Makers of/ Artistic Frames," framed.

Provenance

By direct descent in the Sheffield family of Newport, Rhode Island

Property of a Philadelphia estate.

Literature: Andrew Oliver, Portraits of John and Abigail Adams,[The Adams Papers, Series IV], pages 112-114, plate 53 for image of engraving of John Adams after a portrait by Edward Savage.

Note

John Adams served one term, 1797-1801, as the 2nd President of the United States. He was the nation's first Vice-President under President George Washington. Born in Braintree, Massachusetts, Adams was educated as a lawyer at Harvard. A devout patriot, Adams was a delegate to the first and second Continental Congresses and in 1782 joined Benjamin Franklin and John Jay in Paris to negotiate peace with Great Britain. The Treaty of Paris officially ended the American Revolutionary War in 1783.

This portrait may be the model for the engraving published in 1800 by Edward Savage, "John Adams, Second President of the United States of America," Philadelphia.