Gilbert Stuart - Anna Dorothea Foster and Charlotte Anna Dick [1790-91], originally uploaded by Gandalf's Gallery.
Seeking to enliven their portraits, some painters reiterated their sitters' real-life parlour behaviour and polite accomplishments. Responding to a commission from Dublin's distinguished Foster family, Stuart (American, 1755 – 1828) enlisted the pastime of embroidery to help tell a story. He puts on display the teenaged Anna Dorothea, a marriageable aristocratic girl in want of a good match, perhaps even love, and lets her expert sewing skills carry the narrative. He shows her working on a tambour frame, which indicates that she has graduated from mere samplers to significant projects suitable for framing or use in upholstery. In contrast, he portrays her cousin Charlotte Anna Dick in profile, as befits a younger not-yet-marriage-age lass who serves merely as an accomplice to Anna Dorothea's dual tasks of embroidering and of finding a husband.
[Oil on canvas, 91.4 x 94 cm]
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