Huntington was the preferred portraitist of respectable New York society during the 1860s. Here Mrs. Joseph L. (Anna Watson) Stuart (1817-1881), wife of an Irish-born dry goods merchant turned banker, is seated in a lush landscape. She is dressed in fashionable ermine and laces, and on her right wrist she wears a cameo bracelet, created by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. This family heirloom, now in a private collection, is Saint-Gaudens’s most ambitious extant cameo project, featuring six portraits— Mr. (1803-1874) and Mrs. Stuart and their four children Anna (1840-1902), Joseph Jr. (1843-1890), Margaret (1845-1932), and Robert Watson (1847-1920). Each cameo is set in a gold mount with a shell pearl border.
Credit: Gift of Mrs. Denny Brereton, 1943