Description
Captain Offin Boardman represents slightly more than a half-length view of a standing man turned slightly to the right and looking at the viewer. The sitter's graying brown hair is tied back with a ribbon that rests on his proper right shoulder; a lock of hair covers his proper right ear. Gullager painted the hair with thin brushstrokes of gray and brown paint. Boardman has bushy, dark gray eyebrows and brown eyes. He has a large nose, thick lips, and a double chin.

Boardman's body is large. He wears a long brown coat with large buttons that have white, wedge-shaped highlights to suggest that they are made of silver. Gullager painted lighter brown highlights with zig zagging brushstrokes at the elbows and along the proper right arm. White ruffled shirt cuffs, which are painted with gray and white to suggest sheer fabric, are visible at the wrists. Boardman also wears a green waistcoat with cloth-covered buttons, a white stock, and a white shirt ruffle that is revealed by the four open buttons at the top of the waistcoat. The top of his black breeches are included at the bottom of the composition.

Boardman holds a spyglass that is organized along a diagonal from just below the center of the painting to the lower right corner. His proper right hand holds the brass eyepiece, and his left hand grips the red shaft of the spyglass. Gullager rendered the highlights on the length of the eyepiece with opaque white paint and those on the brass ring above the red shaft with tiny brushstrokes of white and red paint. Boardman's hands are crudely modeled and awkwardly placed.

The gray background is darkest at the left side and in the upper right portion of the canvas, with a lighter gray below Boardman's proper right elbow. Gullager painted the background at right with a lighter cool gray and a tan paint.

Biography
Offin Boardman IV was born February 18, 1747/8, the eldest surviving child of Offin Boardman III (1723–1802) and Hannah Carr Boardman (d. 1777).¹ He had at least six younger siblings and perhaps an older sister who died in infancy before he was born.²

Boardman was a third generation ship master, ship owner, and merchant. His father was a boat builder and resided at the corner of Boardman and Merrimac Streets in the waterside part of Newbury, Massachusetts, which in 1764 became Newburyport. Offin's grandfather Offin Boardman II (1698–1735) had settled in Newbury following his marriage to Sarah Woodman (1702–1752) and drowned while towing a raft of timber from Casco Bay to Boston.³

About 1771 Boardman married Sarah Greenleaf (1747–1796), the daughter of Timothy Greenleaf (1719–1764) and Susanna Greenleaf (1724–1771) of Newbury.⁴ The Boardmans had five children, including Benjamin Greenleaf Boardman, who is represented with his mother in the companion portrait to Offin's.

Boardman was active in the American Revolution and gained notoriety for capturing two British ships on the same day. On January 15, 1776, Boardman suspected that the 200-ton ship Friends, which was several miles offshore, was lost.⁵ He and a crew in three whale boats approached the ship and offered to pilot it into the harbor. The captain, Archibald Bowie, thought that he was near British-occupied Boston and accepted Boardman's offer. Boardman's armed crew boarded the ship and brought the supply-laden vessel to the Newburyport wharf. Earlier the same morning Boardman, as master of the privateer Washington, captured the brig Sukey, which was bound for Boston from Cork.

Boardman was captured in 1776 and imprisoned at Mill Prison, Plymouth, England, from June 1777 to January 1779.⁶ His diary documents his imprisonment and two escapes. A first brief escape on January 29, 1778 ended with his capture in London on February 17 and return to Mill Prison on April 18. He escaped again on January 4, 1779, and this time could write, "I got clear to America" by way of France.⁷ In France Boardman "was introduced to His Excellencies Franklin and Adams who desired me to stop to dinner, which I did myself the honour to accept."⁸ Boardman helped to equip privateers in France and sailed to Virginia on a commercial ship, the Betsey, which he later captained.⁹ In addition to notes about weather and maintenance of the ship, Boardman's diary includes a poem that he wrote to his wife and a list of the books with which he traveled.¹⁰

Boardman attended the Second Presbyterian Church in Newburyport, where he owned pews on the ground floor and gallery level.¹¹ He also owned a pew in "Mr, Hopkins Meeting house" in Newbury.¹²

Boardman's first wife Sarah died on August 29, 1796, and the following spring he married Sarah Tappan (1743–1820), the daughter of Richard Tappan (1707–1785) and Mercy Scott Tappan.¹³ Until this point in his life, Boardman had lived and worked near his stores and wharves in Newburyport. Just a few months before his second marriage, he purchased a country estate of three hundred acres of land with a late-seventeenth-century house made of stone and brick.¹⁴ Boardman's diary records his activities on the farm, including the addition of a west wing to the house and a tenant farmhouse attached to its rear. He also noted digging potatoes, gathering apples, taking milk to market, putting up fences, hauling seaweed, looking for lost sheep, making soap, attending meeting, and hosting social events.¹⁵

Boardman died at his country house on August 1, 1811.¹⁶ Boardman and his two wives were eventually buried together at Highland Cemetery in Newburyport. Although Boardman amassed a significant fortune, he died insolvent.¹⁷ His finances were severely strained by the Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Acts of 1807–09. Boardman also lost six stores and warehouses in a fire in Newburyport on May 31, 1811, just months before his death.¹⁸ Boardman's estate was valued at the substantial sum of nearly forty-nine thousand dollars, but his debts exceeded sixty thousand.¹⁹

Analysis

Figure 1. Christian Gullager, Sarah Greenleaf Boardman (Mrs. Offin Boardman) and Benjamin Greenleaf Boardman, about 1787, oil on canvas, 38 5/8 x 34 3/4 in. (98 x 88.2 cm), Worcester Art Museum, Museum purchase, 1938.5.

Early inscriptions on the Boardman portraits indicate that they were painted in 1787. Gullager is known to have lived in Newburyport by May 9, 1786, when he married Mary Maley Selman (1760–1835) there.²¹ The artist painted at least six other portraits of Newburyport and Gloucester sitters during his stay on the North Shore. In addition to the Boardmans, Gullager painted two more pairs representing a husband and wife: Captain David Coats and Mehitable Thurston Coats (Mrs. David Coats) (both about 1787, Saint Louis Art Museum, Mo.), and David Plumer and Mary Sargent Plumer (Mrs. David Plumer) (both 1787, Sargent House Museum, Gloucester, Mass.). Additionally, Gullager painted a portrait of the Coatses' daughter, Elizabeth Coats (Mrs. John Greenleaf) (about 1787, Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Calif.). Elizabeth Coats was a young woman, perhaps twenty-one at the time, and is shown holding a book inscribed "SPRING."²²

	Figure 2. Christian Gullager, Captain David Coats, about 1787, oil on canvas, 36 1/2 x 32 1/4 in. (92.7 x 81.9 cm), The Saint Louis Art Museum, Saint Louis, Missouri, Museum purchase, 47.1949.		Figure 3. Christian Gullager, attributed, Unknown man, about 1787, oil on canvas, 38 x 31 1/2 in. (96.5 x 80 cm), Historical Society of Old Newbury, Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Notes
1. Newbury Vital Records 1911, I, 56; Newburyport Vital Records 1911, I, 41; and Boardman's gravestone, Highland Cemetery, Newburyport, Mass.

2. Newbury Vital Records 1911, I, 56; and Newburyport Vital Records 1911, 40–41.

3. Goldthwaite 1895, 124.

4. Greenleaf 1896, 423, 440–41. The approximate date of the Boardmans' marriage is suggested by the birth of their first child, Susanna Greenleaf Boardman, on December 29, 1771 (Newburyport Vital Records 1911, I, 41).

5. For Boardman's feats on January 15, 1776, see Essex Journal and the New-Hampshire Packet, January 19, 1776; Smith 1854, 107–09; Currier, I, 1906, 614–17; Bayley and Jones 1906, 355; Allen 1927, 321; Coffin 1977, 251–52; Emery 1978, 176; and Tagney 1989, 228–29.

6. Bayley and Jones 1906, 356.

7. Offin Boardman, Diary, January 4, 1779, transcript, object file, Worcester Art Museum.

8. Ibid., January 18, 1799.

9. Ibid., November 9, 1799, and summary of voyages.

10. Ibid., n.d.

11. Offin Boardman, Will, March 1, 1808, Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 2717, v. 381, 183.

12. Inventory of the estate of Offin Boardman, December 30, 1811, Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 2717.

13. Newburyport Vital Records 1911, II, 46; and Tappan 1880, 52.

14. Boardman's house, known as the Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm is now owned by the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities. See Spencer-Pierce-Little Farm 1990; and Beaudry 1995.

15. Boardman kept his second diary from September 1799 to June 14, 1810. I thank Anne Grady, Research Historian, Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (SPNEA), for sharing the transcription of the diary (edited and annotated by Claire W. Dempsey) with me. Unfortunately, the original diary was destroyed in a house fire.

16. The Newburyport Herald, Newburyport, Mass., August 2, 1811, recorded his death: "At his seat, Newbury, (Oldtown.) Yesterday. Capt. OFFIN BOARDMAN, Æt. 64 Relatives and friends are requested to attend the funeral at 4 o'clock this afternoon, without inviting with more formality."

17. Tax Valuations, Newburyport, 1784, Massachusetts General Court Committees, Special Collections Library, Massachusetts State House, Boston, box 381.

18. Emery 1978, 264.

19. Account of Sales of Real & Personal Estate on Account of the Estate of Offin Boardman, April 20, 22, and 23, 1813, Registry of Probate Volume, Historical Society of Old Newbury, Cushing House Museum, Newburyport, Mass.; and Order of Distribution of Offin Boardman's estate, August 13, 1813, Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 2717.

20. Dresser 1949b, 125.

21. Newburyport Vital Records 1911, II, 204.

22. Gullager also painted Reverend Eli Forbes (about 1786–87, Cogswell's Grant, Essex, Mass., SPNEA) and perhaps two other portraits of unidentified sitters (Historical Society of Old Newbury, Cushing House Museum, Newburyport).

23. Boardman Inventory, December 30, 1811, December 30, 1811, Essex County Probate Records, docket no. 2717.