Provenance

Mary Ridgely Palmer

Palmer, Henry Clay Mrs.

American, 1852 - 1932

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Shown from the knees up, a light-skinned man and woman are seated side-by-side on grassy rise in a landscape in this horizontal portrait painting. To our left, the man leans heavily toward the woman to our right, propped on one elbow near her hip. She sits upright, resting one hand over his forearm and wrist. The clean-shaven man looks at her with blue eyes under gray, arched brows. He has a straight nose, round cheeks, a hint of a double chin, and his pale pink lips are closed in a slight smile. He wears a forest-green coat, a white waistcoat embroidered with golden yellow, a white shirt and ruffled tie, and buff-colored breaches. His right hand, to our left, is propped loosely against his hip. Next to that hand, a green parrot stands with its wings lifted as it turns its head back over its body. The man’s other hand, near the woman, holds a long, wooden telescope. The woman looks off into the distance to our left with gray eyes. She has smooth cheeks, a delicate nose, and her pink lips also curl in a faint smile. A strand of pearls weaves through the brown hair loosely piled on her head and through the thick curls that fall over her shoulders. Her white dress is loosely draped around her body. An ocean-blue sash with gold stripes and fringe wraps around her waist, and a sprig of pink flowers is tucked into a fold at her neckline. She holds at least three peaches and a stem of leaves in her lap, and a spray of purple clover blossoms in her other hand, which rests lightly over the man’s forearm. A swath of white fabric, perhaps from her skirt, wraps up and over the man’s thigh, closer to her. Behind the woman, a tree grows on a low hill along the right edge of the canvas and off the top. The landscape opens into an expansive vista to our left with spindly trees growing in a low meadow that leads back to a body of water in the deep distance. Minuscule in scale, tiny boats and buildings line the water’s edge near the horizon. A few thin, silvery gray and petal-pink clouds skim across the pale blue sky.
Charles Willson Peale, Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming, 1788, oil on canvas, Gift of Morris Schapiro, 1966.10.1

Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming

Charles Willson Peale · 1788 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1966.10.1

Bibliography

1925

  • Powell, Henry Fletcher. Tercentenary History of Maryland. 4 vols. Chicago and Baltimore, 1925: 4:717

1932

  • The New York Times, 18 March 1932: 21 [obituary]