Portrait of a Woman

The sculptural quality of the headdress and coiffure of this portrait of an inquisitive young woman is characteristic of the work of the Danish-born painter Christian Gullager, who immigrated to the United States from Copenhagen by 1786.This portrait was probably painted in Boston, where Gullager lived in the late 1780s and early 1790s (he later worked in New York and Philadelphia). Gullager is best known for having painted and sculpted George Washington, who sat for him in Boston and Portsmouth, New Hampshire.