William Sidney Mount

Widow Hannah Muncy Smith owned land in Penataquit, Long Island, where Mount painted her stoic likeness during the summer of 1852. He also completed a posthumous portrait of her only grandchild, but charged less for Hannah’s, preferring living models. Mount wrote that for Hannah’s portrait, he drew the “old lady . . . aged 73” in india ink, then “glazed the cap with cobalt and the background and dress, with black and burnt sienna mixed . . . to kill or subdue the white ground so that I could see the head (the effect) better . . . I scumbled pure white and touched parts I wished to leave transparent—the portrait successful in color and likeness.”