James Sharples [or Sharpless (English/American, 1751/52-1811), or a member of his family, "Francis Dana (1743-1811), Chief Justice of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (1791-1806)", c. 1794-1796, pastel on very thin laid paper, unsigned, 9 1/4 in. x 7 1/4 in., in an early 19th c. giltwood frame (c. 1814-1824) inscribed with names of artist and sitter, the latter's title and dates of incumbency; titled again on original backing board en verso. E2500-3500 Note: The eminent jurist Francis Dana had been a Revolutionary patriot, serving with John Adams and John Quincy Adams on a diplomatic commission in Paris ( 1779-1780), from which he traveled to St. Petersburg as the first American minister to Russia (1780-1783). He then served in the Continental Congress, as well as on Massachusetts' Constitutional Convention, before being appointed Chief Justice of the Commonwealth in 1791. This pastel portrait, highly characteristic of the American works of James Sharples, would have been made early in Dana's judicial incumbency, when the Sharples family were traveling as itinerant artists in New England (see the related portraits of "Sumner" and "Parker" in this catalogue). Like the "Sumner", this strikingly lifelike image is executed on a sheet so thin as to resemble tissue- paper, whereas James Sharples Sr. usually preferred the heavier support of a more textured paper. This competent pair of pastels (the "Dana" and "Sumner", both contemporaneously labeled as by "Sharpless") may therefore be replications by another member of the family, whose standard practice was to offer several portraits to each sitter-for distributions as gifts, or even as promotions for the talents of the Sharples family. Both were eventually framed en suite with the gouache portrait of a younger Massachusetts jurist (the "Parker" in this catalogue, probably by James's son Felix Sharples), during the latter's term in office, after 1814.