Collection The First Ladies
Biographies & Portraits
Sarah Polk
- Artist
- George Peter Alexander Healy
- Date of Work
- 1846
- Credit
- James K. Polk Ancestral Home Collection
Sarah Polk
Sarah Polk posed in the White House for this portrait by George Peter Alexander Healy in 1846. The artist captured her tastes. She favored silks, satins, and velvet, like the claret-colored velvet example she wears here. Designs for her dresses were those current in the Paris of Louis-Philippe.
You Might Also Like
-
-
Collection Animal Ambassadors
Animals, whether pampered household pets, working livestock, birds, squirrels, or strays, have long been a major part of White House...
-
Collection The Presidents
Biographies & Portraits
-
Bio Frances Cleveland
"I detest him so much that I don't even think his wife is beautiful," said one of President Grover Cleveland's...
-
Bio Sarah Polk
Born in 1803, Sarah Childress grew up on a plantation near Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Elder daughter of a Captain, she gained something...
-
Bio Dolley Madison
For half a century she was the most important woman in the social circles of America. To this day she...
-
Bio Claudia Johnson
Christened Claudia Alta Taylor when she was born in near Karnack, Texas, in 1912, she received her nickname as a small...
-
James Madison's Brother Willey
"I am much at a loss how to dispose of Willey,” James Madison wrote to his father on December 8, 1779. “I can...
-
Dressing Down for the Presidency
The new British minister to the United States was outraged. Within a few weeks of Minister Anthony Merry’s arrival in...
-
Introduction to the Transcription of the Washington Diary of Elizabeth L.C. Dixon
In November 1845, Elizabeth Lord Cogswell Dixon arrived for the “season” in Washington, D.C., with her family. Her husband, James Dixo...
-
The President and Washington During the War with Mexico
James Knox Polk was at home in Columbia, Tennessee, when he judged that it was about time to find out...
-
Uriah Levy's Gift to the Nation
For nearly twenty seven years, a full-length bronze sculpture of Thomas Jefferson was displayed at the center of the North...
