Catharine Lorillard was a daughter of New York City tobacco magnate Peter A. Lorillard. She was born in 1792 and, according to family history, died from cholera while still in her teens. Her expressive portrait, painted with oils on silk and embellished with silk and silk-chenille threads, is unlike any other needlework picture in the collection. Most early-nineteenth-century silk embroideries illustrate scenes from mythology or pastorals, copied from prints. Memorials, usually called mourning pictures, were also popular and often included full-length figures standing at grave sites in landscapes appropriately featuring weeping willows. Catharine's portrait is also a memorial, but in a different, possibly unique, form. It was almost certainly painted posthumously: the drape over her head is a symbol of recent death. Her head and neck were painted by a professional, perhaps after a portrait from life, while the embroidery was probably by one of her female relatives.

It is particularly fitting for Catharine Lorillard's portrait to be in the collection of the Metropolitan. Her niece and namesake, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe, the first woman Benefactor of the Metropolitan, left an important collection of 143 paintings to the Museum at her death in 1887.