Rev. Richard Mather, John Foster's woodcut, c. 1670
About it
Richard Mather in his skullcap and broad collar, his beard spread over his gown, a pair of spectacles in his right hand and an open book under his left; on this copy someone has written “Richardus Mather” across the top and “Johannes Foster sculpsit” at the foot. It is the earliest portrait print known to have been made in the English colonies, cut by John Foster, son of Capt. Hopestill Foster of Dorchester, soon after Mather died in 1669; Hopestill Foster had witnessed Mather’s will and sworn to it in 1669. Five impressions survive, at Harvard, the University of Virginia, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society and Princeton. Houghton dates its copy about 1675, as a frontispiece added to a reissue of Increase Mather’s life of his father; the Virginia copy is dated 1670. A few years later Foster cut the map of New England for Hubbard’s history of King Philip’s War.
- Shows
- Richard Mather
- Related to
- John Foster, Hopestill Foster, Timothy Mather
- Credit
- John Foster, woodcut, c. 1670-1675; the copy added as frontispiece to Increase Mather, *The Life and Death of That Reverend Man of God, Mr. Richard Mather* (Cambridge, 1670). Houghton Library, Harvard University, *AC6.Ad198.Zz683t no.5, via Wikimedia Commons; public domain (the 1920-pixel copy of the 2375-pixel original)
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