Elizabeth Blair Lee, Blair House Collection

This is a portrait of Elizabeth Blair Lee completed by Thomas Sully in 1840. Blair Lee was the only daughter of Francis Preston Blair and Violet Gist Blair of the eponymous Blair House. Blair House is located across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House and has been used as the president's guest house since the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. Blair spent most of her time with her parents and shared her father's love of books and her mother's common sense. In 1843, at age 24, she married Samuel Phillips Lee. Thomas Sully was an American portrait artist who painted portraits of Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson and many musicians and composers.