George Fuller (1822-1884) was an accomplished and well-known artist when he painted this formal portrait of his 20-year-old niece. His art career spanned several decades, beginning with traditional, realistic portraiture and landscape studies in the 1840s and ’50s. A trip to Europe in 1859, exposed him to styles and influences that he incorporated into his later works. Not until the 1870s, however, did his paintings receive serious attention and acclaim in Boston and New York. Fuller’s most famous works were his paintings of young women, but his later landscapes incorporated the same dreamlike, pensive mood that characterized the French Barbizon style.