  
  About the Artwork
  
  
  Dressed in a fashionable and expensive dress made of imported silk, Peggy Sanderson Hughes sits in an elegant chair, probably made of imported mahogany, with one of her daughters seated on her lap. The child is probably Louisa Hughes (1787 &acirc;&#128;&#147; 1861), who inherited both this painting and a companion portrait of her father, Christopher Hughes, which is also at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  
The child wears a gold necklace and and holds a large hand-carved wooden doll; both she and her doll wear silk, like her mother. The doll&acirc;&#128;&#153;s costume may have been sewn locally, perhaps from fragments of a worn-out dress, but the doll itself would have been made in England. Like the chair and the sitters&acirc;&#128;&#153; clothes, the doll is an expensive luxury good that evidences the family&acirc;&#128;&#153;s wealth and status.  
Louisa Hughes went on to marry George Armistead, who during the War of 1812 was assigned command of Fort McHenry in Baltimore Harbor. In August 1813, he commissioned a Baltimore seamstress, Mary Pickersgill, to produce an immense, 30 x 42&acirc;&#128;&#147;foot American flag to fly over the fort. That flag is now famous as the &acirc;&#128;&#156;Star-Spangled Banner.&acirc;&#128;&#157; After his successful defense of Baltimore, Armistead retained the flag, which stayed in the family until his grandson donated it to the Smithsonian Institution in 1912. &acirc;&#128;&#156;The Star-Spangled Banner&acirc;&#128;&#157; now hangs inside the main entrance to the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC.
  
  
  Title
  Peggy Sanderson Hughes and her Daughter
  
  
  Artwork Date
  ca. 1788-1789
  
  Artist
  Charles Willson Peale
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1741-1827
  
  
  
  
  Nationality
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Definitions for nationality may vary significantly, depending on chronology and world events.
  Some definitions include:
  Belonging to a people having a common origin based on a geography and/or descent and/or tradition and/or culture and/or religion and/or language, or sharing membership in a legally defined nation.
  
  
  
  American
  
  
  
  Culture
  
  
  
  Please note:
  Cultures may be defined by the language, customs, religious beliefs, social norms, and material traits of a group.
  
  
  
  
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  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 36 &Atilde;&#151; 27 1/2 inches (91.4 &Atilde;&#151; 69.9 cm)
  Framed: 40 1/2 &Atilde;&#151; 32 &Atilde;&#151; 1 3/4 inches (102.9 &Atilde;&#151; 81.3 &Atilde;&#151; 4.4 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Museum Purchase, Robert H. Tannahill Foundation Fund
  
  
  
  Accession Number
  
  
  
  This unique number is assigned to an individual artwork as part of the cataloguing process at the time of entry into the permanent collection.
  Most frequently, accession numbers begin with the year in which the artwork entered the museum&acirc;&#128;&#153;s holdings.
  For example, 2008.3 refers to the year of acquisition and notes that it was the 3rd of that year. The DIA has a few additional systems&acirc;&#128;&#148;no longer assigned&acirc;&#128;&#148;that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  2010.180
  
  
  Copyright
  Public Domain
  
  
  
