# Martha Washington

- By: John Cheney (born South Manchester, CT 1801-died South Manchester, CT 1885)
- Date: ca. 1859
- Medium: watercolor on ivory
- Classification: Paintings
- Dimensions: image (oval): 1 1/16 x 13/16 in. (2.7 x 2.1 cm)
- Credit line: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Bequest of Mary Elizabeth Spencer
- Museum: [Smithsonian Institution](https://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=38333)
- Rights: [CC0 (Smithsonian Open Access)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://invisiblenetwork.ai/thumbs/web/36b6fa9151bd688190550a6e91a88a55.jpg
- Who can see it: Tweens profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

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.