Robert Lenox Banks, an Albany businessman, commissioned this portrait of his wife, Emma. Apparently pleased with the result, he later commissioned a companion portrait of himself. Elliott portrayed the twenty-nine-year-old Mrs. Banks and her thirty-six-year-old husband as a prosperous young couple. Demurely coiffed, with blue eyes and chestnut-brown hair, and wearing a fashionable white gauzy blouse, she is shown against a drab olive and tan background.