  About the Artwork
  
  
  Sarah Rivera Lopez (1747-1840) sits on a chair upholstered in red silk, her arm around her young son, Joshua (1768-1845). Sarah's Jewish parents had fled religious persecution in Spain and Portugal, settling in New York City, where she was born. The family later moved to Newport, Rhode Island, where Sarah met and married Duarte Aaron Lopez (1731-1782), a Jewish immigrant from Portugal who became one of the wealthiest merchants in colonial Rhode Island. A substantial part of Aaron Lopez's fortune came from ships that carried captive people from West Africa and sold them into enslavement in the Caribbean. 

Gilbert Stuart was a teenager when he painted this portrait. This work comes from a small group of portraits he made in Newport before traveling to England to pursue academic training.
  
  
  Title
  Mrs. Aaron Lopez and Her Son Joshua
  
  
  Artwork Date
  between 1772 and 1773
  
  Artist
  Gilbert Stuart
  
  
  
  Life Dates
  1755-1828
  
  
  
  
  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.
  
  
  
  
  ----------
  
  
  Medium
  Oil on canvas
  
  
  Dimensions
  Unframed: 26 × 21 1/2 inches (66 × 54.6 cm)
  Framed: 31 5/16 × 26 7/8 × 2 1/16 inches (79.5 × 68.3 × 5.2 cm)
  
  
  Classification
  Paintings
  
  
  Department
  American Art before 1950
  
  
  Credit
  Gift of Dexter M. Ferry, Jr.
  
  
  
  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.
  
  
  
  48.146
  
  
  Copyright
  ----------
