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Thomas Smith

1650–1691

Portrait of Thomas Smith

About

Thomas Smith was an artist, sailor and slave trader in colonial New England. Smith is best known for the self-portrait that he painted c. 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.

Notable works

Works in the collection

2 works

More by Thomas Smith in institutions

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