American Art Collaborative

Mary Adams was born in 1828 in the White House while her grandfather John Quincy Adams was president. Asher Durand emphasized her rosy cheeks and conveyed a more reserved personality than that of her younger sister, Georgianna Frances, whose portrait is also in the Luce Center collection
“I am also doing one of [John Quincy Adams’s] little granddaughters . . . as a compliment to the old gentleman. She is a beautiful subject and by [three] sittings I have already got a good likeness . . . then I have promised to paint another grand daughter [sic] of Mr. Adams for himself, the sister of the other.” Asher B. Durand letter in Durand Papers, New York Public Library, quoted in A.B. Durand: 1796-1886, Montclair Art Museum, N.J., 197