Ann Barry

Gilbert Stuart

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the hips up, a young woman with pale skin, pink cheeks, and copper-red hair sits gazing at us in this vertical portrait painting. She has wide-set, brown eyes, a pointed chin, and her pink lips are closed with a mere hint of a smile. Curls frame her forehead and face, and the rest of her hair is pulled up at the back of her head. She sits on a chair upholstered dusky rose-pink chair with her body angled to our right. Her left arm, on our right, rests on the curved back of the chair, and her fingers are interlaced. Her white gown has a low, scooped neckline trimmed with ruffles and is tightly cinched under her bosom. A dove-gray shawl with gleaming straw-yellow accents wraps around her back and drapes loosely over her shoulders and upper arms. A rust-red cloth hangs in folds from the top edge of the painting to fill the right three-quarters of the background. It is pulled aside to the left to reveal a glimpse of a landscape with a green lawn and trees under an azure-blue streaked with white and gray clouds.