Mrs. Stephen Minot (Sally Minot)

Sally Minot had been married about a year when she sat for John Trumbull in New York in 1806, just back with her husband Stephen from a voyage to Calcutta. She wears what fashionable young women on both sides of the Atlantic wore that year, a white gown gathered high under the bust, short puffed sleeves edged with lace, a ruffled neckline pinned with a brooch, her dark hair piled up with loose curls at the forehead. The style came from France and was meant to recall ancient statues. Its usual fabric was fine cotton muslin, and the finest muslin had long come from Bengal, the province whose capital was Calcutta. By then American ships were sailing there to load Indian cottons for the home market.

Trumbull set her against a plain ground with the light falling from the left, and the only jewellery besides the brooch is a long drop earring.