52nd Annual Delaware Show

me to a painting in the Winterthur collection, Henry Benbridge’s Captain John Purves and His Wife, Eliza Anne Pritchard (fig. 2) . In the portrait, the South Carolina military officer wears a belted waistcoat decorated with embroidered florets around the belt’s two central buttonholes. Upon measuring the distance between the central buttonholes of the Winterthur band, I verified that it does match typical buttonhole spacing for waistcoats of the eighteenth century (fig. 3) . The two buttonholes at each end of the belt may have attached to buttons on the side of the waistcoat. Fig. 2. Henry Benbridge, Captain John Purves and His Wife, Eliza Anne Pritchard, oil on canvas, 1775–77. Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont 1960.582 Fig. 3. Detail of the central buttonholes and printed border pattern. The brownish medium, likely ink rather than dyestuff, lies on the surface of the linen fibers. Flaws in the lettering and overlapping sections of the border pattern indicate the rapidity and low quality of the printing. — 159 —