Provenance

Mrs. Robert Homans

Homans, Abigail Adams

American, 1879 - 1974

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Shown from the hips up, a light-skinned woman with deeply flushed cheeks sits in an armchair, looking at us from under raised and pointed eyebrows in this vertical portrait painting. Her body is angled to our right but she turns to look at us with dark eyes lined with a few wrinkles. She has a long, pointed nose, slightly sagging jowls, and her thin, pale pink lips are pressed together in a line. Ringlets of chestnut-brown hair curl onto her forehead from under a frilly white bonnet that frames her face. The bonnet is tied with a wide, white ribbon around the top. The woman’s beet-red gown is cut low but her chest is covered with opaque white fabric that reaches to the frilled collar high on her neck. A sheer white shawl decorated with a pattern of scrolling, stylized leaves and vines drapes across her shoulders. Her right hand, closer to us, rests in her lap. The chair fills the width of the painting, and the woman almost fills the height. The arm of the chair is edged in wood, and the upholstery is patterned with mustard yellow, harvest gold, and tawny brown. The background lightens from dark brown in the upper left corner to tan in the lower right.
Gilbert Stuart, Abigail Smith Adams (Mrs. John Adams), 1800/1815, oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Robert Homans, 1954.7.2

Abigail Smith Adams (Mrs. John Adams)

Gilbert Stuart · 1800/1815 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1954.7.2

Shown from the waist up, a pale-skinned, clean-shaven man sits looking at us in front of a peanut-brown background in this vertical portrait painting. His shoulders are angled to our left, but he turns his head to look at us with blue eyes under dark, arched brows. He has a bumped nose, fleshy, flushed cheeks, loose jowls, and a round chin. He has bags under his eyes, crow’s feet, and his thin pink lips are parted. Gray hair curls like bushes to each side of his balding head, which is white across the top of his pate and down the long, bushy sideburns. He wears a high-collared white shirt with a ruffle at the throat under a similarly high-collared black coat. His left elbow, to our right and closer to us, rests on the arm of a wooden armchair. That hand rests in a loose fist in front of the man’s waist, and the cuff is lined with white lace.
Gilbert Stuart, John Adams, c. 1800/1815, oil on canvas, Gift of Mrs. Robert Homans, 1954.7.1

John Adams

Gilbert Stuart · c. 1800/1815 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1954.7.1

Bibliography

1966

  • Homans, Abigail Adams. Education by Uncles. Boston, 1966.

1974

  • New York Times, 6 February 1974: 40 [obituary]