Martha Dandridge Washington, 1732-1802, Three-Quarters Length, Standing, Flower In Right Hand

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Martha Dandridge Washington appears here in a three-quarter-length standing pose, facing left and holding a flower in her right hand, a detail that marks this portrait apart from the seated or head-and-shoulders likenesses of her that circulated in the same period. The image is a steel engraving by J. Rogers, made after a painting by John Woolaston, the colonial-era portraitist who worked in the American colonies in the 1740s and 1750s and painted many of the Virginia and Maryland families of the time. Engravings like this one carried the likenesses of colonial figures to a wider audience in the nineteenth century, when interest in George Washington's family ran high. The print offers a useful look at how Martha Washington was remembered as a gracious matron of the Virginia gentry.

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