Virginia's Past in Portraiture

William Byrd, the 2nd, wrote Dec. 2, I735, to Col. and act'g Gov. Alex. Spotswood as follows: The person who has the honor to wait upon you with this letter is a man of a Good but either by the power of Fortune, or his own mismanagement, is obliged to seek his Bread a little of the latest in a Strange Land. His name is Bridges and his Profession Painting, and, if you have any employment for him that way he will be proud of obeying your Commands. He has drawn my children and several others in this neighborhood, and tho' he has not the masterly hand of a Lely or Kneller, yet had he lived so long ago, as when Places were given to the most deserving, he might have pretended to be Serjeant Painter of Virginia. Dr. R. C. M. Page, in his Page Family, gives several portraits as having been painted by Bridges, and it is highly probable that the portraits of Gov. Spotswood and his wife were also painted by him. Who was Taylor of Cartersville, Cumberland County, who, I am told, painted many portraits at the close of the last and the beginning of the present century of the Mayo, Carington, and probably of the Randolph and Harrison families

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