John Beale Bordley

This 1770 portrait of John Beale Bordley (1741-1827) by Charles Willson Peale hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

John Beale Bordley, a close friend of Charles Willson Peale, raised the funds in 1766 to send the young artist to London, where Peale trained under Benjamin West's tutelage. In the stormy years before the American Revolution, Bordley was a Maryland planter, judge, and member of the Governor's Council. A fervent republican, he gave Peale his first major commission -- for life-size, symbolic portraits that were to be exhibited in London as declarations of colonial opposition.

The portrait addresses two political issues: America's agricultural self-sufficiency, and her fair treatment. The first of these concepts is referred to in the background, which depicts Bordley's plantation on Wye Island in the Chesapeake Bay. A peach tree and a packhorse signify America's abundance, while the grazing sheep speak for freedom from imported, British woolens. The theme of tyranny dominates the foreground. Bordley, trained as a lawyer, assumes an attitude of debate, raising his hand in a gesture of argumentation. He points to a statue of British Liberty holding the scales of justice, reminding English viewers that the colonists lived under British law and, thus, were entitled to the rights it guaranteed. That Britain had violated these rights is signified by the legal document, torn and discarded at Bordley's feet. A poisonous plant at the statue's base -- the native American jimson weed -- warns of the deadly consequences of any attack on American civil liberties. --  NGA

Torn Legal Document

The Cecil Whig identifies the book Bordley is leaning on as his “ever present journal of crop rotation.”

Journal

Sheep

Packhorse

Jimson Weed (Datura stramonium)

Karol Ann Peard Lawson says that “The torn legal document and poisonous jimson weed at Bordley's feet -both motifs apparently original to Peale- speak of injury and impatience, while the agricultural details in the background of a fruit tree and laden packhorse evince a de facto independence.”

The “Fat Ox” below constitutes the frontispiece of Bordley's book Essays and Notes on Husbandry and Rural Affairs, 1801. See also Bordley's essay on Yellow Fever, published in 1794.

Christies sold this 1790 portrait of John Beale Bordley also by Charles Wilson Peale in 2003:

And the Library of Congress has this 1802/1803 St. Mémin print of Bordley: