Robert Henri painted pendant portraits of Elizabeth Virginia Laning Bradner Smith and her husband, George Cotton Smith, at their home in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in January 1908, shortly before completing the full-length portrait of their neighbor Edith Reynolds. The artist was eager to finish the portraits so that he could return to New York and prepare for the exhibition of The Eight scheduled to open at the Macbeth Gallery on February 3.

Smith was the daughter of Augustus C. Laning and Amanda Elizabeth Christel Laning of Wilkes-Barre. In 1856 she married Josiah H. Bradner, who died in 1857 before their daughter was born the following year. She married Bradner’s business associate, George Cotton Smith, in 1868; the couple had two daughters, one of whom arranged the commission of her parents’ portraits.

The Smith portraits are outstanding examples from Henri’s strongest period and illustrate his maxims on portraiture. The vigorous brushwork and sympathetic portrayal of an older woman reflect the influence of the work of 17th-century Dutch portraitist Frans Hals, specifically his Regentesses of the Old Men’s Alms House (1664, Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem), a group portrait of five women that was widely admired by many late 19th-century writers and artists.