When Belchertown was officially settled in 1731, the town named itself after the governor of Massachusetts at the time, Jonathan Belcher — a man whose 303-year-old portrait is up for auction in Jersey, an independent island in the English Channel, on Thursday.
The oil painting of the former governor of the British Colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Jersey is going up for auction at Martel Maides Auctions, and is listed with an estimated value of at least $6,800 to $9,100.
Belcher, born in 1682 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and painted in the portrait at the age of 34, had become an influential diplomat by that age and successfully promoted Samuel Shute as governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in 1716 on a visit to London.
Belcher would subsequently become governor of the province of Massachusetts Bay and New Hampshire from 1730 to 1741, and then governor of the province of New Jersey from 1747 until his death in 1757. He also promoted the establishment of the College of New Jersey, now Princeton University.
During his 1716 visit to England, Richard Phillips, a prestigious portrait painter at the time, captured Belcher’s image in a painting that has remained largely unknown to the world at large until this spring.
Two months ago, Jersey resident Guy Greenwood re-discovered the portrait that has been in his family’s possession since at least the 18th century.
“We didn’t realize we had it up in the attic, and it’s quite a grand picture,” Greenwood said on Saturday.
Although it’s unclear how the family acquired the portrait, the most likely explanation is through a marriage on his mother’s side of the family.
“My mother was a Chamberlayne,” Greenwood said. The Chamberlayne family had lived in Stoneythorpe Hall in Warwickshire, England, since the 1600s, and his relative, Thermuthes Chamberlayne, married the son of the Governor of Virginia in 1797. Greenwood believes that it was through a familial connection that the painting came under his family’s ownership.
“It’s a little difficult to know how exactly we acquired it,” Greenwood said. “When my grandparents moved from Stoneythorpe Hall to Jersey in the 1940s, the painting came with them. After my grandmother passed away, my mother inherited the painting. It has been in my parents’ attic for the past 20 years.”
The sale may lead to restoration work being done on the painting.
“We feel it would be much better for the painting to be sold on so that it can be restored and enjoyed,” he said. “It is quite sad to be selling something that has been in the family for so long, but we feel that the timing is right.”
The portrait is the most authentic depiction of Belcher that Jonathan Voak, a representative of Martel Maides Auctions and longtime art curator for the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, has come across.
Voak joined the auction house this past April, and the discovery of Belcher’s portrait is an astounding one, he said.
Other original portraits of Belcher during his years as governor were destroyed during the American Revolution, Voak said, “and to find there is something like this still in existence is really exciting.”
“The portrait has survived even when others were lost to history,” Voak said.
Depicting Belcher in a wig, looking directly at the viewing, and wearing a fine coat with an intricately designed sleeve, the portrait is meant to convey his authority, Voak said.
“It’s a power portrait,” Voak said. “And it’s certainly interesting that he would have done such a thing done in London when he was in a diplomatic role at the time.”
A description of the painting with the years, Belcher’s age and information about the painting was handwritten in the back of the portrait, which has made its veracity undeniable.
“It was difficult to read but it’s all there and we managed to decipher it.” Voak said. “The inscription is incredibly useful and it can’t be disputed.”
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com