I recently finished a commission portrait of the Reverend Samuel Parris.
He was the Puritan minister in Salem Village, Massachusetts. His daughter and niece were the first girls who began to act strangely and claimed to have been possessed by witches. Parris, in many ways, encouraged and participated in the resulting witch trials that led to the execution of 20 villagers and the jailing of more than 100 others.
The only known image of Parris is a 2 1/4 inch tall painting that I am using as a reference photo. I tried to capture that tiny image in a 24” X 18” oil-on-canvas painting using many of the same techniques and materials used by Rembrandt and other Flemish painters.
My portrait of the Reverend Samuel Parris is drying and will soon travel to its new home at the Noyes-Parris House in Wayland, MA.
Parris lived in the Noyes-Parris House from 1712 until his death in 1720. RSP was a true “fire and brimstone” minister. Here’s a quote from one of his fiery sermons:
“I am to make difference between ye clean, & unclean: so as to labour to cleanse & purge the one, & confirm & strengthen the other.”
—-from sermon notebook of the Reverend Samuel Parris, September 19, 1689