Jane Byrd Page (Mrs. John Page, 1729-1774)

Jane Byrd Page was the daughter of William Byrd II and Maria Taylor Byrd of Westover. She married John Page of North End in 1746. The portrait is damaged and overpainted so artist attribution is difficult to determine. The dress was one used by John Hesselius in the 1750s and is not seen in known portraits by John Wollaston. Her husband, however, appears to have been painted by John Wollaston in the 1750s, indicating that their portraits were not painted together, though they are the same, unusually-sized canvas. The subject’s sister, Maria Byrd Carter, was also painted by an unknown artist around the same time, while another sister, Anne Byrd Carter, was painted by John Hesselius in the 1750s.

Dimensions: 44 x 33 3/4 in. (111.76 x 85.73 cm.)

The subject wears a silver dress with pearls at the elbows and a gold tassel tied around her waist. Her left hand rests on a table covered in a red cloth. Her right hand gestures downwards. A landscape is partially visible behind her. A red curtain hangs on the left of the painting.

See: Richard Channing Moore Page, Genealogy of the Page Family in Virginia (1883), 20.