Sarah Shippen Lea (Mrs. Thomas Lea) by Stuart, Gilbert

Gilbert Stuart painted Sarah Shippen Lea around 1798, and he gave her the same gift he gave George Washington: the 'tint of health,' that vivid rose in the cheeks that makes a sitter feel present in the room. The portrait is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Art.

Two faces live in this canvas. The obvious one is Sarah herself, with her alert dark eyes and that near-smile Stuart was so good at catching. But look at the gold chain around her neck and you will find a second portrait, a tiny oval miniature pinned at her breast. It is almost certainly a likeness of someone she loved.

Stuart was the dominant portraitist of Federal America, a man who painted the first five presidents and nearly every person of consequence in the early republic. His brushwork below the face is famously loose and suggestive; the grey-blue gown is rendered in broad strokes, but the face and the miniature are precise.

Sarah’s husband, Thomas Lea, died not long after the portrait was finished. She never remarried and lived until 1834, carrying this likeness, and whatever private devotion the little pendant held, through three decades alone. We cannot know for certain whose face is inside that locket, but the question lingers every time you look.