  About the Artwork
  
  
  Lucy Bradley sits in the green fields of her family's Connecticut farm, with a view of the Long Island Sound in the distance. The twenty-six-year-old wears a dress of glossy pink silk and unfolds a delicate painted fan in her hands. The loose curls of hair hanging over her shoulders suggest a pose of informal ease.

Born in colonial Massachusetts, painter Ralph Earl studied and worked in England during the American Revolution. He returned to the United States after the war and traveled around New England to find portrait commissions. He painted Lucy and her sister Huldah Bradley (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) in 1794. When placed side by side, the paintings depict a continuous landscape — Greenfield Hill in Fairfield, Connecticut, where the Bradley family lived.
  
  
  Title
  Lucy Bradley
  
  
  Artwork Date
  1794
  
  Artist
  Ralph Earl
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1751-1801
  
  
  
  
  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: 44 1/8 × 31 1/4 inches (112.1 × 79.4 cm)
  Framed: 52 × 39 5/8 × 3 inches (132.1 × 100.6 × 7.6 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Founders Society Purchase, Dexter M. Ferry, Jr. 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’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.
  
  
  
  41.4
  
  
  Copyright
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