Collections: American Art: Maria Clarissa Leavitt

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Maria Clarissa Leavitt

This portrait was painted the year that the sitter moved from New York to Brooklyn, where her husband, David Leavitt, had an interest in the Brooklyn White Lead Company (later Dutch Boy Paint). One of his partners in this enterprise was the BMA's founder, Augustus Graham. Maria Leavitt, fashionably dressed and coiffed, is seated in a Neoclassical armchair before an open window. A generalized landscape view associates her with nature—a reference both to the cloistered lifestyle of a lady in society and to the heightened sensitivity attributed to the female gender.

• Artist: Samuel Lovett Waldo, American, 1783-1861
• Medium: Oil on panel
• Dates: ca. 1820-1825
• Dimensions: 33 3/16 x 25 1/2 in. (84.3 x 64.8 cm)
• Collections: American Art
• Museum Location: This item is on view in American Identities: A New Look, 5th floor
• Accession Number: 1996.43.2
• Credit Line: Gift of Anna S. Delafield, Fisher Howe, Lawrence Howe and R. Warren Howe in memory of their brother, David Leavitt Howe (1915-1995)
• Image: Overall, 1996.43.2_transp6104.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph
Samuel Lovett Waldo (American, 1783-1861). Maria Clarissa Leavitt, ca. 1820-1825. Oil on panel, 33 3/16 x 25 1/2 in. (84.3 x 64.8 cm). Brooklyn Museum, 1996.43.2 (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 1996.43.2_transp6104.jpg)