Dodge began his career painting tiny designs on watchcases for his father, a New York goldsmith. He exhibited his first miniatures at the National Academy of Design in 1829 and went on to paint more than 1,100 portraits in small scale over the course of his successful career. His meticulously stippled likenesses, such as this one of his daughter, are direct and bright with high-key backgrounds. Roselie looks up from reading a gift or Christmas book, one of a number of small tomes of short stories and poetry published annually in New York. Her parian vase, with its distinctive embellishment of white reeds on a blue lobed body and geometric design on the neck, is characteristic of a popular type produced in Bennington, Vermont.

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