Томас Смит: Художник, моряк и торговец рабами в колониальной Новой Англии.

American painter

Thomas Smith (c. 1650–1691) was an artist, sailor and slave trader in colonial New England. Smith is best known for the self portrait that he painted 1680, which according to the Worcester Art Museum, is "the only seventeenth century New England portrait by an identified artist and the earliest extant American self portrait." Smith was also a prominent Boston merchant and slave trader who engaged in the enslavement of Native Americans during King Philip's War.

Little is known about Smith's early life in Boston. In the mid 1670s, around the time of King Philip's War, Smith was actively engaged in the slave trade. Many of the trades were recorded by Massachusetts Bay Colony treasurer John Hull, who was charged with handling captured Native Americans from the war. Smith purchased 29 Native Americans as slaves in August and 41 captives in September 1676, who were subsequently sold in European and African slave markets. Smith is believed to be the same Thomas Smith who was commissioned by Harvard College on 2 June 1680 to produce a portrait of the Puritan theologian William Ames. Because several Thomas Smiths were active in Boston in the late seventeenth century, it is very difficult to identify other contemporary references to persons of that name with the artist. Smith is assumed to have been a mariner and a Puritan based on his self portrait, which can be traced back to Smith's granddaughter, Catherina Mears Dexter (1701–1797). A maroon curtain and golden tassel appear in the top right corner, lending a sense of depth to the portrait. From a window in the top left corner is depicted a naval battle between Dutch and English forces and an unidentified enemy. Beneath them, a fortification is shown flying two red flags, one of which has three white crescents. The image may well refer to a significant event in Smith's career. The skull, a memento mori, has unrealistically round eye sockets like those found on contemporary funerary engravings in New England.

Five other portraits have been attributed to Smith. Major Thomas Savage (1679) and Mrs Richard Patteshall and Child (1679) are both owned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Captain Richard Patteshall (private collection) was meant to hang with the portrait of his wife.