On March 31, 1800, Francis Jukes (1747–1812) issued an aquatint engraving in London that was to inspire a variety of adaptations by needleworkers and amateur painters. The print, Mount Vernon in Virginia / The seat of the late Lieut. General George Washington, was made after a drawing by Alexander Robertson (1772–1841). The embroidered and painted picture at Bayou Bend was presumably a project at a school like Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts, or Misses Patten’s School, Hartford, Connecticut. It was worked by Plymouth, Massachusetts, resident Nancy Ellis Brewster, probably between 1805 and 1810.

Technical notes: Tabby-weave silk ground; silk chenille embroidery threads. The needlework is executed in satin and couching stitches and has been mounted in an inscribed frame. Details have been painted in watercolor on the silk ground.

Book excerpt: David B. Warren, Michael K. Brown, Elizabeth Ann Coleman, and Emily Ballew Neff. American Decorative Arts and Paintings in the Bayou Bend Collection. Houston: Princeton Univ. Press, 1998.