Evoking an era of perceived simplicity and purity, women dressed in pseudo-colonial garb were popular icons during the Colonial Revival Movement (1880-1910.) The artist, James Wells Champney, and his wife, author Elizabeth Williams Champney, and their children lived in New York City and summered in Deerfield, Massachusetts. The model, Sarah Midgley Cameron (1871-1960), moved to America from Bradford, England, at the age of eighteen. This portrait was painted a year after her marriage to Angus Cameron, who ran the Millers Falls (Massachusetts) Paper Company.