Portrait of a Sea Captain

Though his birthplace is uncertain, the itinerant portraitist William Jennys is known to have lived and worked in southeastern Connecticut in the early 1790s. He placed an advertisement in a Norwich, Connecticut newspaper, in 1793, and his earliest-known paintings date to the mid-1790s, when he was working in New Milford. In 1797 and 1798, he was listed in the city directory in New York, and by 1807 he had made his way to Newburyport, Massachusetts, a coastal town north of Boston.

The quarter-length portrait of a handsome young sea captain is typical of the work Jennys did in the first decade of the 19th century. With his stylish attire and his direct gaze, this gentleman is clearly a man of the world, as he holds a spyglass - a symbol of his profession and his worldly status.