By the time he settled in Boston in 1803, Gilbert Stuart had become America's preeminent artist, widely celebrated for his portraits of George Washington. After a promising beginning, Stuart had gone to London where he studied for five years with Benjamin West, president of the Royal Academy. Stuart's ability to capture true likeness and his virtuoso handling of paint made him a successful portraitist in that city and subsequently in Dublin, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Boston's elite society also eagerly sought portraits from him.
This is one of the few portraits of children Stuart painted during his twenty-three years in Boston; the portrait was probably commissioned by Sally Patten's grandmother Mary Sumner Williams, whom Stuart also painted. Sally's dress incorporates a high waist and puffed sleeves, typical of the Neoclassical style fashionable during the early nineteenth century. (Girls' dresses were identical to women's except that they were adorned with sashes that tied in the back.) Seated in an elegant chair upholstered in red velvet, Sally politely folds her hands and sits up straight. Stuart renders her bowlike mouth, pink cheeks, fleshy chin, short hair, and large brown eyes with soft brushstrokes that impart an endearing quality to the likeness.

This text was adapted from Carol Troyen and Janet Comey, "Children in American Art" (Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2007, in Japanese).

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