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Miss Henrietta Levy

Artwork Tombstone
ArtistThomas Sully (American, 1783–1872)
TitleMiss Henrietta Levy
Date1810
MediumOil on panel
DimensionsFramed: 30 × 25 × 5 1/2 in. (76.2 × 63.5 × 14 cm)
Support: 22 3/4 x 18 1/4 in. (57.8 x 46.4 cm)
Credit LineMorton and Marie Bradley Memorial Collection, Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University
Accession Number92.197
This artwork is currently off display. You may be able to see this artwork by filling out an art viewing room request.
A young woman is sitting, turned to her left with an open book in her hand. She looks out past the right edge of the canvas, lost in thought. Behind her, a landscape is partially visible.

A young woman is sitting, turned to her left with an open book in her hand. She looks out past the right edge of the canvas, lost in thought. Behind her, a landscape is partially visible.

Henrietta Levy descended on her father’s side from Moses Raphael Levy, a prominent member of the tiny Jewish community in late seventeenth-century New York. Henrietta's mother was Protestant and she was raised as an Episcopalian, reflecting the high rate of intermarriage and conversion among Jews in early American society. Her father, Moses Levy, a Philadelphia judge, commissioned this portrait from Thomas Sully, the foremost American portraitist of the era. Sully had just returned from London, where he studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and mastered the fluid, elegant style cultivated by British portraitists.

Provenance research is ongoing for this and many other items in the Eskenazi Museum of Art permanent collection. For more information about the provenance of this artwork, please contact the department curator with specific questions.

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"Miss Henrietta Levy | Collections Online." Collections Online. Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Museum of Art, Indiana University, 2025. https://artmuseum.indiana.edu/collections-online/browse/object.php?number=92.197