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Mrs. James Smith (Elizabeth Murray)
John Singleton Copley (American, 1738–1815)
1769
Medium/Technique
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
126.05 x 101.6 cm (49 5/8 x 40 in.)
Credit Line
Gift of Joseph W. R. Rogers and Mary C. Rogers
Accession Number42.463
CollectionsAmericas
ClassificationsPaintings
Elizabeth Murray Smith was an importer and retailer of British millinery and dry goods. She conducted her own business affairs and earned economic freedom unusual for a woman in colonial America. She probably commissioned this portrait, as she is known to have sat for Copley in 1769, two months after the death of her second husband. As she wrote to a friend, she was now able "to live and act as I please."
ProvenanceThe artist; to Smith family; to Elizabeth Murray Robbins, niece of the sitter; to James Murray Robbins, her son, Milton, Mass.; to Mrs. Robert P. Rogers, his sister, Canton, Mass., by 1915; to Joseph W.R. and Mary C. Rogers, her children; to MFA, 1942, gift of Joseph W. R. Rogers and Mary C. Rogers.