3-075-147 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Mrs. Clark Gayton, 1779. Elizabeth Legge Gayton sits in elegant, relaxed repose. She rests on her left elbow, holding a brush in her right hand to suggest that she was only recently painting on the sheets of paper gathered in a loose folio at her side. A red geranium blooms in silhouette against the open window. Native to southern Africa, that flower had to be carefully protected from the cold English weather. The artist used these details to signal Gayton’s refinement, worldliness, and prosperity. Copley painted this domestic portrait in London to hang alongside his naval portrait of Elizabeth’s new, significantly older husband Admiral Clark Gayton (1712-1785).