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John Beale Bordley, by Charles Willson Peale, 1770.
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This 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.  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 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.

Credit: Courtesy the Collection of the National Gallery of Art. Gift of The Barra Foundation, Inc. 1984.2.1 Caption for art description from the National Gallery of Art

The year before Charles Willson Peale painted his portrait in 1770, Bordley had written a pamphlet advising American farmers to grow staple crops, like wheat, that would aid American independence rather than the cash and luxury crops "tobacco, wine, silks" that "kept them in debt and dependent" to "British storekeepers." To make the portrait a clear statement of the American agrarian Republican ideal, Peale packed it with symbolism. Unlocated for close to two centuries, Bordley's portrait turned up at a museum exhibit in Florida in the 1960s.

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