Leaving the Manor House by American 19th Century

This is "Leaving the Manor House," a mysterious American folk painting from around 1850, now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington. The title is descriptive, a guess. No one knows who painted it, or who the woman is. It remains unsigned, an orphaned masterpiece of nineteenth-century American life.

The painting is full of departures. A woman in a dark formal dress stands on the manor porch as a horse and carriage wait on the gravel. A dog bounds ahead, the only real motion in the frame. But the real clue is on the water: two sailboats. For all the wealth on display, in mid-19th-century America, the smoothest routes were still rivers and bays, not rutted dirt roads.

Look at the details the unknown painter loved: the black-and-white checkerboard tiles of the porch, drawn flat and slightly off, a hallmark of folk art. The ornamental iron fence and fountain that declare the family's status. The columned facade partly hidden by climbing roses. And the sky, huge and theatrical, making a small farewell feel ceremonious.

Someone stood in front of an American manor house around 1850 and decided this quiet moment of leaving was worth a canvas. We still look at it, 175 years later. What do you think she was going toward?