Martha Dandridge Custis (Mrs. Daniel Parke Custis, 1731-1802)

Martha Dandridge Custis was married to Daniel Parke Custis. Her second husband was George Washington. Her children were John and Martha Custis.

Reference: A 1757 receipt for 56 pistoles to pay for this portrait and portraits of her husband and children is in the Custis Family Papers, Virginia Historical Society.

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

The subject wears an imaginary style dress of blue with a yellow underskirt and a bow at her breast. She stands in a garden with a honeysuckle bush. Her right hand holds a sprig of honeysuckle. She is turned three-quarters to her right.

See: Carolyn J. Weekley, Painters and Paintings in the Early American South (2013), 243; Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture (1986), 371-373.