Mrs. Samuel Quincy (Hannah Hill)

Hannah Hill was the daughter of a prosperous Boston distiller and liked to call herself Sophia, the bookish nickname of the day. This portrait was probably made for her marriage in June 1761 to Samuel Quincy, a sociable young lawyer from Braintree. Copley dressed her in a costume borrowed from Rubens's portrait of his wife Helena Fourment, a picture that had reached an English collection in 1730 and set off a fashion for such fancy dress. The low square bodice, the sleeves caught back with gold chains and the hat all come from Rubens. In place of the feather in Helena's hand, Hannah holds a sprig of larkspur, a flower that then stood for ardent attachment. The attachment was tested. Both families were Whigs, and so at first was Samuel. In 1770 he argued for the prosecution against the British soldiers tried after the Boston Massacre, while his younger brother Josiah helped defend them. Samuel then drifted toward the Loyalists, served as the province's solicitor general, and in May 1775 sailed for England. Hannah stayed behind with the children in her brother's house in Cambridge, a Whig to the end. On New Year's Day 1777 he wrote to her that their unhappy separation had become almost too heavy for his spirits. Most accounts say they never met again, yet in 1782 Samuel wrote to her brother describing how she had died in his arms.