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Accession #	65.60
Artist	John Singleton Copley
Title	Mrs. Sylvester (Abigail Pickman) Gardiner
Date	ca. 1772
Medium	Oil on canvas
Dimensions	50 3/8 x 40 in. (128 x 101.6 cm) frame: 58 1/4 x 49 1/2 x 3 1/2 in. (148 x 125.7 x 8.9 cm)
Signed	Unsigned
Credit Line	Dick S. Ramsay Fund
Location	American Identities: Modern Life

Curatorial Remarks: In these two paintings, Abigail Pickman and Elizabeth Goldthwaite sat for their marriage portraits. As was typical of upper-class white women in the colonial United States, they likely did not control how they were represented in these images, which were intended to project the family’s stability and wealth.

Before the American Revolution, the Boston painter John Singleton Copley was the most sought-after artist in the country. Copley’s portraits, highly regarded for their skillful rendering of luxurious items such as silks and pearls, were synonymous with the tastes of the eighteenth-century social elite, both in the United States and England.