Two Portraits of Young Boys

The portraits in the current and following lots were found in New Brunswick, Canada and are thought to depict members of the Evetts family. While there are a few individuals of this name in New England in the early to mid-eighteenth century, it is possible that these works portray descendants of James Evetts (c.1654-1706) of London and New York. He was one of the original vestrymen of Trinity Church and the architect of New York’s second City Hall, built in c.1700. His daughters married members of the Townley family of Elizabethtown, New Jersey and in turn their descendants married into the Badgley family, many of whom were Loyalists. That the portraits surfaced in Canada supports the possibility that they were previously owned by a family with Loyalist sympathies. See John Ross Delafield, “Appendix 6: The Evett Family of London and New York,” in Delafield: The Family History (1945), pp. 502-504; Estelle Clark Watson, Loyalist Clarks, Badgleys, and Allied Families (Rutland, Vermont, 1954), pp. 15-16, 76, 83.