| Existing comment:
Elizabeth Fitzhugh, at age eighteen, by John Hesselius, 1771. This marriage portrait is considered by some eminent authorities to be the finest portrait executed in colonial Virginia. The subject, too, has been admired. In 1835, one gentleman who saw the portrait remarked on this "most voluptuous looking woman... her round figure and lovely bosom partly covered by a rich brocade heightening the charms which it half conceals." Like her husband, she died young -- age thirty-five. The frame is original. |