Catherine Brass Yates (Mrs. Richard Yates)

Gilbert Stuart

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the lap up, a woman with pale skin wearing a white satin dress and tall white bonnet sits sewing with her body facing our left in this vertical portrait painting. She turns her head to look directly at us from under slightly raised eyebrows with heavy-lidded, almond-shaped, dark brown eyes. She has a long, sharp nose and her high cheekbones are lightly flushed. Her thin lips are pressed together with the corners pulled back, and her mouth is framed by vertical wrinkles along her chin. A bonnet of sheer white fabric is secured around her head by a white silk ribbon tied into a four-loop bow above her forehead. The bonnet is pleated to create ruffles that frame her face. The woman pinches threaded sewing needle between her right thumb and index finger, farther from us, while holding the thread taunt with her outstretched pinky. Light catches a pearl-like object near her thumb, but on closer inspection it might be a thimble she wears on her middle finger. The remainder of the thread is secured by her left index finger and thumb, which also holds the fabric she stitches. A gold ring glistens on the third finger of her left hand. The crisp fabric of her dress looks white in the light and the shadows are a silvery, pale gray. The long sleeves fit closely along her arms and more fabric, perhaps of the skirt, billows up beside her over the arm of the chair. A piece of gauzy white cloth drapes over the woman's neck and over her shoulders, and may be tied around her torso. She sits in a dusky rose-pink upholstered chair lined with brass nail heads. The background behind her is taupe near her torso and it darkens to nearly black in the upper corners.