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Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman looking off to the left from her seat on a divan wears a carnation-pink gown and a fur-lined cloak in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks into the distance with close-set, large, gray-blue eyes. She has dark brows, a straight nose, a full lower lip, and a slight double chin in her long, oval face. Pewter-gray hair is brushed back from her high forehead and bound up under a loose swath of lace and pearls. Her loose gown is gathered under a gold, pearl-lined belt that follows the shape of her breasts along the top edge and is straight across the bottom edge. Tufts of snow-white cloth are pulled out at the neckline and at the elbow. The skirt falls loosely under the cloak, which is marine blue on the outside. The white fur interior is speckled with black, suggesting ermine. The woman holds two ends of what might be a bracelet made up of at least ten strands of fine, purple beads. Each end has a gold fitting, perhaps clasps. Her navy-blue seat curves from behind her shoulders down and across the background under a coffee bean-brown background. The woman is lit starkly from the left, throwing her ear and the far side of her face, to our right, into shadow.
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Shown from the knees up, a pale-skinned woman looking off to the left from her seat on a divan wears a carnation-pink gown and a fur-lined cloak in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our left, and she looks into the distance with close-set, large, gray-blue eyes. She has dark brows, a straight nose, a full lower lip, and a slight double chin in her long, oval face. Pewter-gray hair is brushed back from her high forehead and bound up under a loose swath of lace and pearls. Her loose gown is gathered under a gold, pearl-lined belt that follows the shape of her breasts along the top edge and is straight across the bottom edge. Tufts of snow-white cloth are pulled out at the neckline and at the elbow. The skirt falls loosely under the cloak, which is marine blue on the outside. The white fur interior is speckled with black, suggesting ermine. The woman holds two ends of what might be a bracelet made up of at least ten strands of fine, purple beads. Each end has a gold fitting, perhaps clasps. Her navy-blue seat curves from behind her shoulders down and across the background under a coffee bean-brown background. The woman is lit starkly from the left, throwing her ear and the far side of her face, to our right, into shadow.

National Gallery of Art · Painting

Abigail Smith Babcock (Mrs. Adam Babcock)

John Singleton Copley

Date
c. 1774
Medium
oil on canvas
Dimensions
overall: 116.8 x 90.8 cm (46 x 35 3/4 in.) framed: 140.3 x 115.9 x 7 cm (55 1/4 x 45 5/8 x 2 3/4 in.)
Classification
Painting
Accession number
1985.20.1
Credit line
Gift of Mrs. Robert Low Bacon
Time span
1751 to 1775
Department
CAB
Original NGA record Wikidata

Subjects and terms

  • painted surface
  • American
  • female
  • portrait
  • American Paintings of the Eighteenth Century
  • Babcock, Mrs. Adam
Provenance

Edwin A. Blake [1847-1928], the sitter's great-grandson;[1] sold 1916 to (Macbeth Galleries, New York);[2] purchased 1917 by Alice Greenwood Chapman, Milwaukee [1853-1935];[3] repurchased by (Macbeth Gallery, New York); sold 25 February 1919 to Arthur Meeker [1866-1946], Chicago.[4] Fannie Morris Babcock Murray [Mrs. Henry Alexander Murray, 1858-1940], New York;[5] her daughter, Virginia Murray Bacon [Mrs. Robert Low Bacon, 1890-1980], Washington, D.C.;[6] gift 1985 to NGA. [1] Stephen Babcock, _Babcock Genealogy_, New York, 1903: 219; Wilkins Updike, _A History of the Episcopal Church in Narragansett, Rhode Island_, 2nd ed., Boston, 1907: 2: v; on Blake see the _Journal of the Eightieth Session of the New York East Annual Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church_, Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1928: 665-667. The painting shares most of its history with the portrait of Adam Babcock [NGA 1978.79.1]. [2] Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, correspondence with Arthur Meeker, 16 January 1919. See also "Copley Portraits Sold," _The New York Times_ (30 December 1916). [3] Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Washington, correspondence with Miss Chapman, 14 January to 19 June 1917. Miss Chapman made a first payment on the portrait and its pendant of Mr. Babcock in January 1917, but she changed her mind about the purchase. On Miss Chapman, a Milwaukee art patron and collector, see the Milwaukee _Journal_ for 27 April 1935 (obituary) and 12 May 1935. [4] Meeker, vice-president of Armour & Co. and a collector of American art, is listed in _Who Was Who in America_ 2 (1943-1950, fourth printing 1946), 367; his obituary is in _The New York Times_ (6 February 1946): 23. This painting and eight other American portraits in his collection were illustrated in an article by Henry Van Horn, "Arts and Decoration," _Town and Country_ 77, no. 3801 (20 February 1921): 22-30; the painting is discussed on 22 and reproduced on 29. Although he offered to sell the portraits back to Macbeth in June 1925, there is no record in the Macbeth Gallery papers that they were repurchased (Macbeth Gallery Papers, Archives of American Art, Correspondence). [5] Babcock 1903, 520; obituary, _The New York Times_ (3 June 1940): 15; Mrs. Murray was a descendant of the sitter's brother Henry Babcock. According to Barbara neville Parker and Anne Bolling Wheeler, _John Singleton Copley, American Portraits_, Boston, 1938: 30, she acquired the portrait about 1930. [6] Babcock 1903, 520; obituary, _The New York Times_ (26 February 1980), reprinted in _The New York Times Biographical Service_ 11, no. 2 (February 1980): 161. Adrian Lamb painted a copy of this portrait in 1979.

NGA object ID 65885. 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.