Elizabeth Stith Fitzhugh (Mrs. Henry Fitzhugh, 1754-1786)

Elizabeth Stith Fitzhugh was the daughter of Drury Stith and Elizabeth Buckner Stith. She married Henry Fitzhugh (1750-1777) of Fitzhughburg and Bedford in 1770. Her second husband was Henry Fitzhugh (1747-1815) of Belle Air. The portrait was at Bedford by 1835.

Dimensions: 50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 cm.)

The subject wears a pink dress with a ruffled stomacher, bows, and lace trim, and with a blue sprig of flowers tucked into her bodice. She has a pearl hairpiece. She wears a four strand pearl necklace and her right hand holds pearls in her lap. Her left forearm rests on a marble slab table. A blue curtain is on the right side of the portrait. She sits in a wooden chair. A window to her right provides a view of a distant, mountainous landscape. A cluster of buildings is in the far distance.

See: Richard K. Doud, “The Fitzhugh Portraits by John Hesselius,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 75, no. 2 (April 1967): 159-173.