After painting Edward Shippen, Stuart was commissioned to paint his daughter Sarah Shippen Lea (1756−1831). Stuart was “said to have spoken of her as one of the most beautiful women he ever painted.” Sarah married the Philadelphia merchant Thomas Lea in 1787. The mood of the portrait is a striking contrast to that of her father. Her expression is both sweet and sad, her heavy eyelids closed slightly over her blue eyes, her bright pink cheeks and lips conveying good health perhaps artificially. Her hair is loosely fashioned in the French style with the brown curls piled high and cascading onto her shoulders. Her black Empire-style dress has a low-cut bodice and tight-fitting long sleeves. A gauzy fichu, or scarf, draped over her shoulders slightly covers her soft flesh. Its edges, sketched in strokes of black and white, are so loosely painted on her right side that they appear almost cloudlike. Behind is a tree with golden brown leaves that catch the sunlight from the left.
Mrs. Lea’s portrait is traditionally dated to about 1798, but it could be closer to the date of her father’s portrait. At the very least, it must have been painted after August 1795, the date of a portrait of her son Robert that she wears as a miniature at the end of a large gold chain. The original oil portrait, painted on a wood panel about ten by eight and a half inches in size, is larger than the miniature that Stuart has depicted. He has taken license with the original, which is the work of Adolph-Ulrich Wertmüller, a Swedish artist who had gone to Philadelphia in 1794. -- Corcoran Gallery of Art, American Paintings to 1945, 2011.
Robert Lea
Robert Lea 1795 by Adolph-Ulrich Wertmüller
No comments:
Post a Comment