Mary Blair Braxton

Mary Blair Braxton poses in an oyster-colored satin gown with white lace cuffs and neckline in this 1750s portrait by John Wollaston. The English artist came to America in 1749, stayed for nearly ten years, and executed hundreds of portraits during that time. While in Virginia from 1755 to about 1758, he painted portraits of Mary Blair Braxton and her then-husband George Braxton III. A daughter of John Blair (ca. 1687–1771), an important political figure in Williamsburg, Mary Blair outlived three husbands—George Braxton III, who died in 1761 at the age of twenty-seven; Robert Burwell, who died in 1777; and Roger Prescott, who died in 1795.