  About the Artwork
  
  
  Elizabeth Legge Gayton (ca. 1748 – 1809) sits in elegant, relaxed repose. She rests on her left elbow, holding a brush in her right hand to suggest that she was only recently painting on the sheets of paper gathered in a loose folio at her side. A red geranium blooms in silhouette against the open window. Native to southern Africa, that flower had to be carefully protected from the cold English weather. The artist used these details to signal Gayton’s refinement, worldliness, and prosperity.

American artist John Singleton Copley painted this domestic portrait in London to hang alongside his naval portrait of Elizabeth’s new, significantly older husband Admiral Clark Gayton (1712 – 1785). In his portrait (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, United Kingdom), Admiral Gayton stands next to a table piled with nautical charts, in front of British naval ships on a stormy sea.
  
  
  Title
  Mrs. Clark Gayton
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1779
  
  Artist
  John Singleton Copley
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1738-1815
  
  
  
  
  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: 50 × 40 inches (127 × 101.6 cm)
  Framed: 58 5/8 × 48 3/4 × 3 7/8 inches (148.9 × 123.8 × 9.8 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Mr. D. J. Healy
  
  
  
  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’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—no longer assigned—that identify specific donors or museum patronage groups.
  
  
  
  27.556
  
  
  Copyright
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