Portrait of a Woman

Nobody knows who this woman is, but the canvas has been in Massachusetts for about two centuries. An inscription on the back says it was bought in London by Barney Smith before 1813, probably in 1806. In 1813 Smith bought Milton Hall, south of Boston, the country estate of Thomas Hutchinson, the royal governor of Massachusetts who sailed for England in 1774 and never came back. The portrait hung in that house until 1917. Smith's descendants called her the Honourable Mrs Fenwick, a name the museum has not taken up. The same inscription records that in 1876 the painting was relined, given a fresh canvas backing, under the care of the Boston dealers Doll and Richards. In the early 1940s a great-great-grandson of Smith sold it to Vose Galleries in Boston, and it came to the museum in 1954 as the bequest of Walter J. Noonan.