Sarah Tucker Fitzhugh (Mrs. William Fitzhugh, 1663-ca. 1715)

Sarah Tucker Fitzhugh married William Fitzhugh (1651-1701) of Eagle’s Nest. The portrait is recorded in her husband’s will. Based on her husband’s portrait, she was likely painted in ca. 1698. It is unclear when it went missing/was destroyed. There is no record of it being copied by John Hesselius in the 1750s when her husband’s portrait was copied by her son. The artist was possibly the person that William Fitzhugh wanted to “set up” as a painter in 1698 when he ordered paintings supplies.

References: Husband’s 1701 Will, “I Give my son William my own & wife’s pictures & the other 6 Pictures of my Relations together,” in William Fitzhugh’s Will and Inventory, 1701

Husband ordered from England: “Six three quartered lacker book frames for pictures well burnished, About 40 or 50 shillings worth of colours for painting wt. pencils walnut Oyl & Linseed Oyl proportionable together with half a doz. 3 quarter clothes to set up a painter.” – William Fitzhugh to John Cooper, July 26, 1698

See: Richard Beale Davis, ed., William Fitzhugh and His Chesapeake World, 1676–1701: The Fitzhugh Letters and Other Documents (1963), 366, 379.