Elizabeth Bolling Gay (Mrs. William Gay, ca. 1709-1766)

Date: 1735-1744

Elizabeth Bolling was the daughter of Robert Bolling and Mary Kennon Bolling. She married William Gay in 1730. The portrait appears to have descended in the Bolling family rather than the Gay family, and no portrait of her husband is recorded.

Dimensions: 29 1/2 x 24 3/4 in. (74.93 x 62.87 cm.)

The subject wears a wrap dress with a pearl and jewel clasp. She wears a floral hairpiece attached to a long scarf that is draped around her arm. She is turned towards to her left and is inside a painted oval frame.

See: FARL; Graham Hood, Charles Bridges and William Dering: Two Virginia Painters, 1735-1750 (1978), 47-54.

Family: BollingGay
Decade: 1730s1740s
Credits: Private collection. Photograph by Ira W. Martin, courtesy of the Frick Art Reference Library.