A Mother and Son; she, facing left in cream-coloured dress with high lace collar, a red stole around her shoulders, her dark hair curled and upswept, seated and her son, in white dress with curling blond hair, holding the red stole

Nathaniel Rogers was one of New York's leading miniaturists of the early 19th Century. While recovering from a knee injury, he began copying prints and miniatures and was soon painting small scale portraits. He was apprenticed to Joseph Wood (1778-1830) and by 1812 he had opened his own studio. T. S. Cummings (Historic Annals of the National Academy of Design from 1825 to the Present Time, Philadephia, 1865, p. 185) records that Rogers painted 'most of the fashionables of his day'.