It is Sad ....when.... [portrait of Elizabeth Hammond Dorsey]

It is very sad, when a Gilbert Stuart portrait leaves the family to which it belongs.

I am faced with that question as well.... will my daughter appreciate my Stuart portrait of Samuel Meeker, does it fit with "millenial decor" in any way at all?  The Meeker portrait belongs, perhaps, in old colonial homes of PA, where it might sit with other portraits of the same time period, in a special place on a special wall....where the family can point to past portraits of their family ancestry!  Or it belongs in the Philadelphia Museum of Finance. Where it can be admired, and be part of the financial history of this nation.

Is this what has happened to the portrait of Mrs. Hammond Dorsey? That she does not fit with the family decor?  This portrait is to be auctioned later this week, at Bonhams. It is an oil on panel, and the provenance is from the sitter by descent to the present owner.  

The sitter is beautiful, but note that Stuart does not make her nose less hooked.  The master painter refused to beutify his sitters. Stuart also painted Elizabeth's father who was Secretary of War in George Washington's administration. Pickering won election to represent Massachusetts in the United States Senate in 1803. Elizabeth (1793-1819) and Hammond Dorsey (1790-1823) were married in Baltimore in 1815. The Dorsey family was a prominent plantation family of MD, Hammond Dorsey was born on the "manorial estate" of "Belmont" built in 1738, where his father grew up. Unfortunately a sister inherited the estate. But the father owned many estates and Hammond inherited wealth. "The lands of Caleb Dorsey on Curtis Creek were later found to contain valuable deposits of iron ore which were expooited and became the nucleus for the affluence of this branch of the Dorsey family." It seems Elizabeth died at a young age, the pair had one daughter born in October 1818.  The daughter Mary inherited the family wealth, and married a first cousin.

Mrs. Elizabeth Hammond Dorsey is seated three-quarter-length, in a white dress with an ermine-trimmed robe,  the portrait was possibly commissioned by the sitter's brother. They were the children of Senator Timothy Pickering (1745-1829).

Mrs. Elizabeth Hammond Dorsey

Gilbert Stuart