Portrait of Susan Coren Towers (1796): Art, History and Details

Portrait of Susan Coren Towers (1796) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is James Peale (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1749–1831).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Susan Coren Towers was the daughter of a major in the Revolutionary War, and her husband was a successful woolen goods manufacturer. While little is known about Towers outside of her husband’s and father’s pursuits, Peale painted her with slightly asymmetrical clothing, bouncy curls, and a slight smirk, possible hints at her personality. While many portrait miniatures have compartments containing the sitter’s hair, this example holds hair from two individuals, likely Towers and a loved one.

Object facts

• Title: Portrait of Susan Coren Towers
• Date: 1796
• Creator attribution: James Peale (American, born The Thirteen Colonies, 1749–1831)
• Culture: America, late 18th Century
• Type: Portrait Miniature
• Technique: watercolor on ivory
• Dimensions: Framed: 8 x 6.6 cm (3 1/8 x 2 5/8 in.); Unframed: 7.1 x 5.6 cm (2 13/16 x 2 3/16 in.)
• Collection: American - Painting
• Department: American Painting and Sculpture
• Accession number: 1942.1151

A detail from the museum

Online fans of the Broadway musical Hamilton have frequently misidentified this image as a portrait of Peggy Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law.

Collection credit

The Edward B. Greene Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Edward Belden Greene. Portrait Miniatures ; The Edward B. Greene Collection. 1951.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.