Locating Slavery's Legacies @ University of Virginia

Memorial Artwork

Visual Work of Art

Enslaver

Blair, James

Painted portrait of James Blair

James Blair lived from 1656-1743. He was founder and first President of the College of William & Mary. Blair was an enslaver who lived on the first floor of the College building (before the construction of the President's House) with his wife, Sarah Harrison Blair, and several people who they enslaved. In the painting, Blair looks to be sitting in the Brafferton Indian School building. Charles Bridges painted the portrait after the College building's burning in 1705 and subsequent rebuilding by the 1720s, meaning the portrait was painted in the 1730s or early 1740s before his death in 1743. Blair is sitting indoors, has his elbow on the Bible that is on a table with a red tablecloth, and is wearing religious robes and a wig. There is a phoenix in the background, which is a reference to the College's burning and rebuilding.

Oil painting dimensions 49 x 39 3/4 in. (124.46 x 100.96 cm.)

Bridges, Charles

1735

Bridges, Charles

William & Mary; Williamsburg, Virginia

Graham Hood, Charles Bridges and William Dering: Two Virginia Painters, 1735-1750 (1978), 29-37

Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 178

Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture (1986), 217-220

Encyclopedia Virginia entry on James Blair