The Solace Project #27
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Dear Friends,<br/><br/>Here’s the thing about looking closely: we can get literally to the nub of things.  This week I had a few ideas about what I would write today, and then came the most fascinating letter from Christina Vida, the curator of collections at the <a href="https://thevalentine.org/">Valentine Museum</a> in Richmond.  She was curious about this portrait: <br/><br/>First a thank you to Christina, I love getting letters, images, inquiries about Gilbert Stuart so many years after Ellen Miles and I curated a big show back in 2005. As I’ve surely mentioned in other posts here, we scoured the field for his works, the best, the worst, the most interesting, the unfinished (loads of those), the unknown sitters, the famous sitters, and many many many portraits of George Washington. We sorted works by where they were painted, as Stuart grew up in Newport, Rhode Island, then moved to Edinburgh (his ancestral home), London, Dublin, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, D. C., and Boston, not so much peripatetic as following the money.  I wouldn’t say that we saw everything, but we saw pretty much everything. But I had never seen the portrait at the Valentine.  <br/><br/>Let’s look: a woman most distinguished by her long nose, bright eyes, rosy cheeks, and ringlets of soft brown hair, is seated in an upright manner, arms resting on her lap, fingers entwined, her right hand cupping her left.  She wears a white empire dress, the style that cinches under the bosom, with a wide square lace-trimmed neckline showing her white neck and shoulders.  A tiny brooch is pinned to the center of the neckline.  A pink shawl embellished with white embroidery generously wraps around her right shoulder, and falls down her left arm. She sits in a low armchair, upholstered in fawn-colored velvet.  The background is blank, a modulated version of the same color as the chair.  <br/><br/>What we know, or what we learn from Christina: She is Elizabeth McClu
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serenaM
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