Mrs. Thomas Fuller (Mary Fuller)

Mary Fuller was 57 when Samuel Morse painted her in June 1829, and she is dressed as a married woman of her age in a country town would be at home, in a white frilled cap tied with lilac ribbons and a light kerchief with an embroidered border folded over her shoulders. The canvas was made as the companion to the portrait of her husband, the village doctor, and the two were meant to hang side by side.

Three months later, in September, Morse painted the couple again, this time as a pair of cabinet portraits, small pictures about 28 by 23 centimetres, well under half the height of these. One suggestion is that the small pair was meant for the Fullers' grown children, who may have wanted their parents' likenesses without the wall space or the money for full-size canvases. That small pair later left the family and turned up with Godel and Company, a New York dealer in American paintings.