Elizabeth Colden was the daughter of Cadwallader and Alice Christie Colden. Her father, an ardent royalist, was lieutenant governor of New York from 1761 until his death in 1776. She married Peter DeLancey (died 1770) in 1737. They lived on a large estate in what is now part of the Bronx and had twelve children. Their sons all served with the British forces during the American Revolution; their daughter Alice married Ralph Izard, a southerner who sided with the revolutionaries.
The Museum has an earlier oil portrait of the same sitter by Matthew Pratt (acc. no. 57.38, 29 3/4 x 25 in., possibly about 1770).
?the sitter's daughter, Mrs. Ralph (Alice DeLancey) Izard, Charleston, S.C. (until d. 1832); by descent? to Mrs. Charles Byrd, Bedford City, Va. (sold to Hewitt); Erskine Hewitt, Ringwood Manor, Passaic, N.J. (until d. 1938; his estate sale, Parke-Bernet, New York, October 22, 1938, no. 1001, as American School, circa 1770, to MMA)
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Four Centuries of Miniature Painting," January 19–March 19, 1950, unnumbered cat. (p. 7, as by an Unknown American Painter).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Eighteenth-Century Woman," December 12, 1981–September 5, 1982, unnumbered cat. (p. 60).
New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art," November 5, 1996–January 5, 1997, no. 147.
Albert Ten Eyck Gardner. "Portrait of a Bronx Aristocrat." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 17 (April 1959), p. 208, ill., attributes it to the American School and dates it about 1780; states that it "has sometimes been attributed to Ramage" and "is said to have belonged to [the sitter's] daughter Alice, Mrs. Ralph Izard"; provides extensive biographical information on the sitter.
Graham Reynolds with the assistance of Katharine Baetjer. European Miniatures in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1996, pp. 12–13, 138, no. 147, colorpl. 147 and ill. p. 139, feel that this is probably the work paid for by the sitter in 1783, as recorded in Engleheart's fee book.
Katharine Baetjer. "British Portraits in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 57 (Summer 1999), p. 42, ill. (color).
Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009.
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