Elegant and relaxed, Elizabeth Maxwell Swan (1762 – 1825) is surrounded with the trappings appropriate to a successful banker’s wife. A small drawstring purse lies next to her on the damask-covered camelback sofa, reinforcing her privileged status. Mrs. Swan’s aqua dress is trimmed with lace and pearls, her pink sash is embroidered with gold, and she has twined pearls and a white ribbon into her long brown hair. In a 1789 diary entry, Charles Willson Peale himself recalled retouching her hair “with the hope that I should better please Mrs. Swan in her portrait which I painted last winter.” As often occurs with Peale’s female sitters, Mrs. Swan holds a bound volume of James Thompson’s Seasons (1730), a lengthy poem. A few lines from “Summer” describe a “pastoral queen” who “in gracious dignity enthron’d...rays her smiles, sweet-beaming on her shepherd-king.”