Miss Leman

Executed in oil on a wooden panel, the portrait measures 21 cm in height and 17 cm in width. The handling is refined and delicate, with smooth blending of flesh tones and careful attention to the sitter’s lace collar and hair curls. The small oval format and wooden support align with Eichholtz’s early practice of producing intimate family portraits on panel, often commissioned from or gifted to relatives.

The luminous modeling and restrained palette emphasize the sitter’s calm demeanor, characteristic of portraiture from the early 19th-century American Federal style.

The work’s modest dimensions and refined technique reflect Eichholtz’s adaptation of European miniature conventions to American oil portraiture on wood.

Created in 1808, the oil-on-wood portrait of Miss Leman was painted by Jacob Eichholtz. The work remained within the Leman family in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, before passing by descent to Adelia Leman (1857–1947), the artist's grandniece. Adelia Leman kept the painting as part of a collection of family portraits and other souvenirs of the artist's past.

In 1948, Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch of New York and Cambridge, Maryland, likely purchased the portrait from Adelia Leman's estate. The couple subsequently donated the work to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1953.

The work is held by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Its accession or inventory number is not specified in the provided sources. The painting entered the collection through a gift in 1953 from Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, who acquired it in 1948 from Adelia Leman, a grandniece of the artist.[1] It was previously exhibited in the 1943 brochure for the Jacob Eichholtz exhibition at the Philadelphia Art Alliance, where Helen W. Henderson noted its provenance from the Leman family of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.[1]

Jacob Eichholtz painted Miss Leman in 1808, an oil on wood portrait held in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The work entered the museum's collection through a 1953 gift from Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch, who acquired it from Adelia Leman, the artist's grandniece, likely from her estate in 1948. Helen W. Henderson noted its charm as part of a series of small oval family portraits viewed in the grandniece's home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Jacob Eichholtz’s portrait titled “Miss Leman” is an oil painting executed on a wooden panel around 1808. The work presents a young woman rendered in a restrained palette, set against a dark backdrop that isolates the figure and emphasizes her attire and features.