Shown from the hips up, a light-skinned woman with deeply flushed cheeks sits in an armchair, looking at us from under raised and pointed eyebrows in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our right but she turns to look at us with dark eyes lined with a few wrinkles. She has a long, pointed nose, slightly sagging jowls, and her thin, pale pink lips are pressed together in a line. Ringlets of chestnut-brown hair curl onto her forehead from under a frilly white bonnet that frames her face. The bonnet is tied with a wide, white ribbon around the top. The woman’s beet-red gown…
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Abigail Smith Adams (Mrs. John Adams)

painter Gilbert Stuart (American, 1755 - 1828)

1800/1815

Medium
oil on canvas
Classification
Painting
Dimensions
overall: 73.4 x 59.7 cm (28 7/8 x 23 1/2 in.) ; framed: 97.5 x 84.8 x 10.8 cm (38 3/8 x 33 3/8 x 4 1/4 in.)
Culture
American
Museum
National Gallery of Art, CAB
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Robert Homans
Rights
Public domain (NGA Open Access, CC0), as the museum states it.
Who can see it
Tweens profiles and older: its subjects are known and suit older children. How works are placed

View at the National Gallery of Art

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