Lot Essay
The sitter, Mary Plummer, later Clemenceau, was the pupil of, and later wife of Georges Clemenceau. Clemenceau arrived in the United States in 1865 after fleeing France due to involvement in radical political activism during the regime of Napoleon III. He eventually taught at a girls school in Stamford, Connecticut, which Plummer attended. The two wedded in 1869. Together they had three children.