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Martha Washington
John Cheney (born South Manchester, CT 1801-died South Manchester, CT 1885)
ca. 1859
- Medium
- watercolor on ivory
- Classification
- Paintings
- Dimensions
- image (oval): 1 1/16 x 13/16 in. (2.7 x 2.1 cm)
- Museum
- Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Mary Elizabeth Spencer
- 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
In 1757, the year her first husband died, Martha Dandridge Custis (1731-1802) sat for a portrait by John Wollaston. Martha was then only twenty-six years old, and within two years would marry her second husband, George Washington. Wollaston’s portrait of Martha was engraved in 1859 by John Cheney, of the firm Cheney & Kellogg. Cheney then painted this miniature, based on his own engraving.
