3-075-640 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Mrs. William Page, between 1860 and 1861. Portrait of American author Sophia Stevens Hitchcock, wife of painter William Page, at the Colosseum in Rome. Sophia came to Europe after her first husband died in 1852 after only a year of marriage. She travelled to England and Paris, where she wrote regular columns on local customs and events for the "New York Tribune", published under the by-line "An American Woman in Paris." She and Page met in Rome in 1856, and in October 1857, after Page travelled back the United States to obtain a divorce from Sarah Dougherty, he and Sophia married.