Abigail Smith Babcock (Mrs. Adam Babcock)

John Singleton Copley

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman looking off to the left from her seat on a divan wears a carnation-pink gown and a fur-lined cloak in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks into the distance with close-set, large, gray-blue eyes. She has dark brows, a straight nose, a full lower lip, and a slight double chin in her long, oval face. Pewter-gray hair is brushed back from her high forehead and bound up under a loose swath of lace and pearls. Her loose gown is gathered under a gold, pearl-lined belt that follows the shape of her breasts along the top edge and is straight across the bottom edge. Tufts of snow-white cloth are pulled out at the neckline and at the elbow. The skirt falls loosely under the cloak, which is marine blue on the outside. The white fur interior is speckled with black, suggesting ermine. The woman holds two ends of what might be a bracelet made up of at least ten strands of fine, purple beads. Each end has a gold fitting, perhaps clasps. Her navy-blue seat curves from behind her shoulders down and across the background under a coffee bean-brown background. The woman is lit starkly from the left, throwing her ear and the far side of her face, to our right, into shadow.