Sarah Fitzhugh (1746-1793)

Sarah “Sally” Fitzhugh was the daughter of Henry Fitzhugh and Sarah Battaile Fitzhugh of Bedford. She married Theodorick Bland in 1772.

Reference: Father’s August 1767 account records, “By altering my picture and my wifes £2:12:0/ By drawing Sallys do half £10:2:0/ [total] £13:0:0,” in Fitzhugh Family Papers, Duke University

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

The subject wears a gold dress trimmed with lace. A pink drape is around her waist. She has pearls in her hair a wears a triple strand pearl necklace. There is a pearl bow at her breast and she leans on a stone plinth with her left arm. There is a view of a landscape on the left of the canvas.

See: Richard K. Doud, “The Fitzhugh Portraits by John Hesselius,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 75, no. 2 (April 1967): 159-173; Wayne Craven, Colonial American Portraiture (1986), 368.