A discussion with illustrations of some 17th- and 18th-century English and Continental portraits in relationship to colonial American portraiture. On two European trips, the author found no portraits which seemed to be of comparable quality with some of the distinctive American contemporaries, while untutored painting studied seemed to be quite different from such known American work. With the present state of knowledge, only tentative conclusions can be drawn about the European background, one being that there is a distinct quality about the best American work. Perhaps this distinctiveness resulted from the distance between the American artists and academic centers for training them. Each portrait included is analyzed with detailed identification of subject, date, medium and size, description, ownership, reproductions, and bibliography. 17 illus., 72 notes.