Photographed by Scott Wolff. Scanned from a slide. Color corrected by Pat Cagney.

Sarah Chew Elliott O'Donnell

Artist Charles Willson Peale (American, 1741-1827)

Date1787

MediumOil on canvas

DimensionsOverall, Frame: 36 1/8 x 27 1/2 in. (91.8 x 69.9 cm)

ClassificationsAmerican art

Credit LineGift of Mrs. Frank Batten

Object number62.94.1

Terms

Women
Portraits
Gray
Pink
White
Black
Green
Gold
American naive

Collections

American Art before 1945

On View

On view

DescriptionThis is an oil on canvas painting showing a woman in a white gown, embroidered in gold, trimmed with pearls, lace, pink silk and a pink silk sash, holding a miniature of a man in a jeweled frame with a black picot ribbon. The figure is seated and shown in three quarters length, the head almost full-faced, hair is natural graying blond. The nosegay of star-shaped flowers on her bodice may be a tremblant. The background has a curving high stone wall with two urns, green foliage of a tree above the wall and two small weeping willows by the water at the left end of wall.

Label TextCharles Willson Peale American, 1741—1827 Mary Chew Elliott, 1787 Oil on canvas Mary O’Donnell, 1791 Oil on canvas Sarah Chew Elliott O’Donnell, 1787 Oil on canvas This group of portraits depicts three generations of women from the same wealthy Baltimore family in a manner that highlights both their elevated social status and embodiment of ideal virtues ascribed to upper-class women in eighteenth-century America. While the elder Mary Chew Elliot appears restrained in an elegant but simple domestic setting, her daughter Sarah O’Donnell’s portrait signals her worldly sophistication by including a neoclassical backdrop, reminiscent of British portraiture. Meanwhile, the young Mary O’Donnell grasps a pair of cherries, a common symbol of youthful innocence, while an opulent teething rattle made of coral and gold dangles from her sash. Gifts of Mrs. Frank Batten 63.112.1, 61.91.1, and 62.94.1