1855.3
Portrait of Brigadier General Samuel Waldo
Artist
Robert Feke
(Oyster Bay, Long Island, New York, ca. 1707 - ca. 1752, Barbados)
Title
Portrait of Brigadier General Samuel Waldo
Creation Date
ca. 1748
Century
mid-18th century
Dimensions
96 5/8 in. x 60 1/4 in. (245.43 cm x 153 cm)
Object Type
painting
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
oil on canvas
Credit Line
Bequest of Mrs. Lucy Flucker Thatcher
Copyright
Public Domain
Accession Number
1855.3
Samuel Waldo’s full-length portrait commemorates the 1745 British and American victory over the French during King George’s War (1744–1748), part of Europe’s War of Austrian Succession. The massive fort at Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, is visible in the background. In the portrait, considered Robert Feke’s masterwork for its painterly quality and monumental size, Waldo symbolizes his status as a brigadier-general with a baton. Instead of a uniform, however, he is dressed in the attire of a prosperous merchant. One of many Anglo settlers who sought control of Maine lands, Waldo secured thirty square miles in what is now mid-coast Maine (the Waldo Patent). He orchestrated its colonization by recruiting German and other settlers. In the process, however, indigenous Wabanaki were dispossessed from their homelands. New research also reveals Waldo’s extensive role in enslavement. His wealth, like that of many other Bostonians of his time, was derived as a slave trader in Guinea and Gambia and as an enslaver in Boston as early as 1728.
