Rufus Hathaway

Rufus Hathaway (1770–1822) was an American medical doctor and folk art painter. He lived in southern Massachusetts, where he painted numerous portraits between 1790 and 1795. He later studied medicine and established himself as a doctor at Duxbury.

Hathway was born in Freetown, Massachusetts, and was the eldest of six children born to Asa Hathaway and Mary Phillips; The family moved several times, settling in Bristol, Rhode Island in the mid-1780s. Hathaway arrived in Duxbury in 1791, and began painting portraits of members of locally prominent families. In 1795 he married Judith Winsor, the daughter of a locally important merchant. He took up medicine at this time, possibly at the behest of his new wife's family, He seems to have abandoned painting, as very few works by his hand are known after the time of his marriage, and surgeon Frederick Winsor was a great-nephew.

Thirty-three portraits by Hathaway are known to exist, dating almost exclusively to the years between 1790 and 1795; among them the educator and politician George Partridge. He also painted landscapes, portrait miniatures, and overmantels. His epitaph, which he may have composed himself, relates to his career as a physician. In 2006, a pair of portraits, of Josiah Dean III and his wife, Sarah, were sold at Sotheby's, together fetching $380,000.

Selected works Lady with Her Pets, 1790, Metropolitan Museum of Art: his earliest known work Joseph Robertson Tolman, c. 1795, formerly Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (sold 1999) Sylvia Church Weston Sampson, 1793, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut Lucy Winsor, c. 1794, Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, Maryland Joshua Winsor (1748–1827), 1793, formerly New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts (sold) Seth Winsor, c. 1793–95, RISD Museum A View of Mr. Joshua Winsor's House & c., c. 1793–95, American Folk Art Museum three portraits (of Ezra Weston II, his wife Jerusha, and his daughter Maria), Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum (attributed)