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Mrs. John Quincy Adams
Charles Bird King (born Newport, RI 1785-died Washington, DC 1862)
ca. 1824
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- 51 1/2 x 39 5/8 in. (130.8 x 100.6 cm.)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Adams-Clement Collection, gift of Mary Louisa Adams Clement in memory of her mother, Louisa Catherine Adams Clement
- Rights
- CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access), 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 Smithsonian Institution
About this work
Louisa Catherine Johnson was born in England to an American father and British mother. Her father was the first American consul in England after the Revolutionary War, and the elegant Johnson household was a gathering spot for prominent Americans passing through London. John Quincy Adams visited the Johnsons while serving as American minister to Holland. He fell in love with Louisa, and proposed to the twenty-two-year-old beauty only four months after they met. The couple married in 1797 in London. Here, Louisa is shown about thirty years later, around the time her husband took office as president. She is elegantly dressed and plays the harp, an emblem of her musical ability and refinement. The title of the music score reads “Oh! Say Not Woman’s Heart Is Bought,” and Charles Bird King, with his characteristic attention to detail, copied the lettering as it appeared on the sheet music.
