Maria Hamilton Beckford (Mrs. William Beckford) by West, Benjamin

This is "Maria Hamilton Beckford (Mrs. William Beckford)" by Benjamin West, painted in 1799 and now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art. The painting presents an image of serene, cultivated wealth, but the story it tells through omission is far more complex.

Look past the sitter's composed face and elegant blue dress. Her hands rest on a book and a guitar, symbols of a refined education. But the title of the painting names her through her husband, William Beckford, who was at the time one of the wealthiest men in England. The distant mansion visible in the background is Fonthill Abbey, his colossal and doomed architectural project.

That fortune was built on sugar plantations in Jamaica, and on the labor of enslaved people. The Beckford family were the largest sugar plantation owners in the British West Indies. West, an American-born painter who became president of the Royal Academy, painted the surface of this world with exquisite skill while the violent source of its wealth remained completely outside the frame.

The abbey itself is also a ghost. William Beckford built it at staggering speed and expense, and its great tower collapsed barely a generation later. The mansion in this painting no longer exists, leaving only this portrait as a record of the life it was meant to frame.