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AT THE FOOT OF CHURCH STREET, on the bluff of
Black's Creek, in Bordentown, New Jersey, there is a small inclosure known as the "
Hopkinson burying ground." In this place of sepulture are laid to rest the Bordens,
the Hopkinsons, the Kirkbrides, and other allied families, and among the inscribed stones
there is cut on one of them: "In memory of Ann Penington, daughter of Isaac and Sarah Penington, who departed this life October 28th, 1806, in the 22nd year of her age."
Carried off in the bloom of youth by consumption, the indications of which can be
descried in her picture, Nancy Penington had sat the previous year to have her portrait
painted for her half-sister, Elizabeth Wister; and this picture, painted
when she was twenty, is one of the most interesting of the portraits of women that Stuart
limned. It is interesting in itself as a characteristic portrait of a young woman,
beautifully executed; but it has the added interest of having received the highest
possible mark of approval from the great painter himself when he affixed his signature to the canvas.
Stuart's conceit was proverbial, and when he was asked, on one occasion, why he did not place his name or initials upon his pictures to mark them, answered: "I mark them all over." While this is emphatically true, and Stuart's pictures are otherwise unsigned, he is known in two instances to have placed his name on his work. One of these is his original whole-length portrait of Washington, belonging to the Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, signed, " G. Stuart, 1796"; and the other is this portrait of Nancy Penington, where beneath the window-bench can be read, "G. Stuart, Bordentown, 1805."
That this superb portrait is well worthy of the guinea stamp thus placed upon it by
Stuart can be seen from the admirable engraving by Mr. Wolf, wherein the qualities
of the painter are rendered with masterly skill. It is painted with unusual care
for one of Stuart's pictures on this side of the water. Many of his portraits in England show thoughtful attention to the details; but when Stuart returned to his native land he seems to have thrown off all convention, and to have painted with a freedom that sometimes ran into carelessness. He had the true artist instinct and love for white,
and therefore we find most of the women that he painted robed in diaphanous, colorless gowns, wherein he
could show his feeling and his power. But he painted Nancy Penington in black velvet, seated in a chair covered
with crimson brocade, the better to set off her auburn hair and her redhazel eyes, and to give the sensation of
healthiness to the hectic flush upon the cheek that bespeaks her early doom.
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