William and Mary Greenleaf Portraits - Update

Two years ago I wrote a post about the portraits of my 5th great-grandparents, William Greenleaf (1725-1803) and his wife Mary Brown Greenleaf (1728-1807) by Blackburn.

In the last few weeks I (accidentally) located the original portraits.  As with many of my finds, it started with some semi-random Googling which landed me on a Flickr photo stream belonging to Ed Bierman.  Ed has posted beautiful color portraits of both paintings which led me to believe he'd photographed the original paintings - these were too good to be anything less.

"The Honorable William Greenleaf (1757) Joseph Blackburn," photograph by Ed Bierman of the portrait by Joseph Blackburn.

"Mary Brown Greenleaf (1757) Joseph Blackburn," photograph by Ed Bierman of the portrait by Joseph Blackburn.

I noticed on the page for the photograph of the William Greenleaf portrait, that the photo belonged also to a set titled Portland Art Museum.  I assumed this meant that the portrait was hanging there, and was where it had been photographed.  The art museum in Portland, Maine, is called the Portland Museum of Art.  The art museum in Portland, Oregon, is the Portland Art Museum.  I searched the web site, and not turning up anything, dashed off an email to the curatorial staff.  I received a prompt reply confirming that the portraits are indeed currently at the Portland Art Museum in Oregon.

The paintings are much more striking than the black and white reproductions I've seen led me to believe.