Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams

Artist: Gilbert Stuart
Date of Work: 1821-1826
Medium: Oil
Type: Portrait
Credit: The White House Historical Association (White House Collection) Gift of John Q. Adams.

Portrait of Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams by Gilbert Stuart in 1821-1826; Oil on canvas, 30 x 25 inches.

This portrait, together with Stuart's 1818 likeness of Louisa's husband, John Quincy Adams, descended in the family to a great-great-grandson, who presented both of the works to the White House. Louisa Adams was about 50 when this incisive head was painted. The rest of her long life was divided between Quincy, Massachusetts, and Washington. Stuart's portrait is definitive in simultaneously presenting "the Madam" of Henry Adam's childish memory--'a little more remote than the President, but more decorative her delicate face under very becoming caps'--as well as the image he later knew to be as true, of a woman whose interior life was 'one of severe stress and little pure satisfaction.