Mrs. John Winthrop

Mrs. John Winthrop

John Singleton Copley

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Hannah Winthrop (1727–1790) and her husband, John, a professor of mathematics and natural history at Harvard College, were renowned for their success in cultivating rare fruit. Here, Copley portrayed Mrs. Winthrop's face and clothing, as well as the surrounding setting, with great care and skill; she sits in a chair upholstered in silk damask and leans on a beautifully reflective mahogany tea table. The most telling objects in the painting are the nectarines she holds, one still attached to its branch. They are examples of a recently improved variety of the fruit, surely grown in the sitter's own Cambridge greenhouse.

The American Wing

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The American Wing's ever-evolving collection comprises some 20,000 works of art by African American, Euro American, Latin American, and Native American men and women. Ranging from the colonial to early-modern periods, the holdings include painting, sculpture, works on paper, and decorative arts—including furniture, textiles, ceramics, glass, silver, metalwork, jewelry, basketry, quill and bead embroidery—as well as historical interiors and architectural fragments.