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This painting shows a young girl in a full-length portrait. She is standing with her body slightly angled to the left and her left arm resting on a stone pedestal. The girl has light skin, straight brown hair with bangs, dark eyes, and a calm expression on her face. She wears a light pink dress with puffed sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a full skirt with lace details. A pink sash is tied around her waist, and she wears red shoes. She holds a pink rose in her right hand. The background features a lush green garden with dense foliage and a partly cloudy blue sky. The stone pedestal beside her appears to have a vase holding roses.
Read the visual description

This painting shows a young girl in a full-length portrait. She is standing with her body slightly angled to the left and her left arm resting on a stone pedestal. The girl has light skin, straight brown hair with bangs, dark eyes, and a calm expression on her face. She wears a light pink dress with puffed sleeves, a fitted bodice, and a full skirt with lace details. A pink sash is tied around her waist, and she wears red shoes. She holds a pink rose in her right hand. The background features a lush green garden with dense foliage and a partly cloudy blue sky. The stone pedestal beside her appears to have a vase holding roses.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Anna Maria Cumpston

Charles Peale Polk

Date
c. 1790
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 147 x 95.6 cm (57 7/8 x 37 5/8 in.) framed: 157.5 x 104.9 x 5 cm (62 x 41 5/16 x 1 15/16 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1953.5.32
Credit line
Gift of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch
Time span
1776 to 1800
Department
CAB
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • girl
  • portrait
  • American
  • Realist
  • American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century
  • Cumpston, Anna Maria
Provenance

Probably by descent from the sitter to her daughter, Emily Williams Cooper (Mrs. Colin Campbell Cooper), Philadelphia; probably her son, Colin Campbell Cooper (1856-1937), Philadelphia, or his sister, Emily, or his brothers, Samuel M. and Ned Cooper; (Victor Spark, New York, 1944); sold 1948 to Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch;[1] gift 1953 to NGA. [1] A photograph of the painting in the Edgar Preston Richardson Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, D.C., is inscribed "Victor Spark 1944." Spark described the previous owners of the painting as the sitter's direct descendants (letter of 4 March 1948, NGA curatorial file). Later he wrote that he bought the painting "in Philadelphia from a family with which Colin Campbell Cooper must have been closely connected as the house was filled with his works. I believe that the family's name was Cooper also." (letter of 18 October 1983, NGA curatorial file). Spark's papers, Archives of American Art, offer no information on the history of this painting. For information on Cooper and his relatives see James M. Hansen, _An Exhibition of Paintings by Colin Campbell Cooper_ (Santa Barbara, 1981), unpaginated and _The New York Times_ 7 November 1937, section 2, 9 (obituary).

Inscription

center right, on pedestal: C. Polk

NGA object ID 42435. Collection metadata is reproduced under CC0. This work is included because its NGA published-image record is marked open access; visitors should recheck the source record before substantial reuse.