Shared by the Redwood Library

Mary Winthrop Wanton, c. 1740. Robert Feke (1707-1752). Oil on Canvas. Gift of Angelica Gilbert Gardiner.   Mary Winthrop Wanton was the wife of Joseph Wanton, Rhode Island’s last colonial governor. The fashionable decolletage of her gown is cut so low that the scandalized Redwood directors a century later asked artist Jane Stuart (Gilbert Stuart’s daughter) […]

Henry Collins, c. 1736. John Smibert (1688-1751). Oil on Canvas. The Gladys Moore Vanderbilt Széchényi Memorial Collection. Henry Collins (1699-1764) was a Newport merchant, philanthropist, and patron of the arts. He was nicknamed, “Newport’s Lorenzo de Medici” for his generous and enthusiastic patronage of the emerging cultural life of colonial Newport. He donated the land on […]