Elizabeth Page Harrison (Mrs. Benjamin Harrison, 1751-1782)

Elizabeth Page Harrison ws the daughter of Mann Page II and Anne Corbin Tayloe Page of Rosewell. She was the second wife of Benjamin Harrison of Brandon. She was also painted as a child by John Wollaston in a double portrait alongside her brother, Mann Page III.

Dimensions: 49 1/2 x 39 3/4 in. (125.73 x 100.96 cm.)

The subject appears to stand on a portico. She wears a blue wrap dress inspired by antique Roman costumes and/or Turquerie costumes. Small gold clasps are on her elbows. A purple and gold sash is belted around her waist. A sheer shawl with gold embroidery is wrapped around her left arm and is held at her right side by her right hand. She wears a cord necklace and has pearls and blue ribbon in her hair. A pink rose is tucked into her neckline. Her left elbow rests on the base of a column, which is carved. Red drapery is wrapped around the column. To her right is a view of a Virginia landscape with a body of water, a forest, and a Virginia rail fence that runs across a clearing. Smoke rises out of a chimney of a small cluster of buildings barely visible in the distance. It is signed and dated at the base of the column: “C W Peale / pinxt 1775”.

See: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Online Collection; Charles Coleman Sellers, “Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 42 (1952): 100-101.