Emma Rathbone Turner (Mrs. Robert Lenox) Banks (1835-1866)
Charles Loring Elliott (1812-1868)
Date:
1864
Medium:
Oil on canvas
Dimensions:
27 H x 22 W
Inscription:
Signed, lower left: C L Elliott/Jan 1864
Credit:
Bequest of Effie Hunter Keys Banks, Jr.
Accession Number:
1937.4.2
Comments:
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.
