Mary Bethel Boude (Mrs. Samuel Boude)

Benjamin West

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the waist-up, a pale-skinned woman wearing a gold-colored gown and a muted dark pink shawl stands before a hazy landscape in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled slightly to our right, but she turns her face to our left as she looks at us from the corners of her dark gray eyes. She has an oval face with low, straight eyebrows, a long nose, prominent chin, and her thin, pale pink lips are closed. Her brown hair is pulled back and a lock curls over her right shoulder, to our left. Her low-cut bodice is lined with filmy ruffles and has a pink bow at the front center. The bodice fits tightly to the waist, where the full skirt flares out in deep folds. The sleeves end at the elbows with broad, ruffled cuffs. A dusky rose-pink shawl wraps around her back and over her elbows. She rests her left arm, to our right, on a ledge and holds a dark pink flower in that hand. The background has a suggestion of a structure nestled in dark trees to our right and a sky mottled with clouds across most of the picture.