Abigail Smith Adams (Mrs. John Adams) by Stuart, Gilbert

This is Gilbert Stuart's 1808 portrait of Abigail Adams, now in the National Gallery of Art. It survived the burning of Washington by being smuggled out in a wagon just ahead of the British invasion.

Look at the crimson dress. It is the only strong color in the painting against Stuart's signature dark ground. For a woman in her sixties, a widow who had already buried a child, wearing red was an assertive choice, a color of vitality and political life when convention dictated black.

Abigail Adams had been dead for over a century when this portrait finally resurfaced in 1930, discovered in the attic of a family descendant. For decades, curators had no idea where it was. The painting had left Washington during the War of 1812 and simply vanished from the public record, surviving not in a museum but in private homes, handed down through generations.

Stuart painted her with the same psychological clarity he brought to his famous portraits of Washington. The eyes are steady and assessing, this is a woman who advised a president, ran a farm during a revolution, and wrote thousands of letters that still read as sharp, funny, and fiercely intelligent. What do you think she is thinking right now?