1779

Portrait of the Enoch Edwards Family

American, 1743 - 1812

Enoch Edwards (1751–1802) was a Philadelphian who trained as a physician and served as a surgeon in the Continental Army (the colonial army formed during the American Revolutionary War). This group portrait commemorates his marriage to the half-sister of Henry Benbridge, who painted the scene. Benbridge depicts himself, along with Dr. Edwards’s sister, on the couple’s left, clothing the bride in a luxurious form of imaginary dress employed by many eighteenth-century artists. Benbridge had traveled to Rome and London to study but returned to his native Philadelphia in 1770. A composition of this type, portraying an informal gathering of family or friends, is called a “conversation piece.”