PORTRAIT OF A WOMAN WITH A DOG

As written on the reverse of the relined canvas, this portrait was thought to portray First Lady Martha Washington (1731-1802) and painted by William Beechey (1753-1839), portraitist to British royalty in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The large black hat with ostrich feathers, white dress with blue trim and dog are details seen on portraits by Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough in the 1780s and it is likely that the artist was following stylistic conventions established by these preeminent portraitists. See for example, Joshua Reynolds, Maria Marow Gideon and Her Brother, William (1787), The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham; Thomas Gainsborough, Mr and Mrs William Hallett (or The Morning Walk) (1785) and Mrs. Siddons (1785), National Gallery of Art, London).

The portrait was gifted to the current owner's grandmother, Helen Upshur Hunt (1889-1982), no doubt as she was a direct descendant of the purported sitter through the Custis-Peter-Williams-Upshur lines. A pair of seed pearl earrings donated by Helen is currently in the collections of George Washington's Mount Vernon, acc. no. W-2214/A-D.