Mrs. Thomas Lynch, 1755
Oil on canvas, 29 7/8 x 24 7/8"
Gift of Barbara B. Millhouse, 1972.2.1

Conventional wisdom holds that wealthy eighteenth-century southerners were more "English" than other colonists.  They followed the latest London fashions and preferred English artists for their portraits.  The Swiss immigrant artist Jeremiah Theus, however, made a thriving thirty-year career as a portrait painter in cosmopolitan Charleston, South Carolina.  An early advertisement for Theus' offerings in the South-Carolina Gazette stated that "for the Convenience of those who live in the Country, he is willing to wait on them at their respective Plantations." This portrait of Elizabeth Allston Lynch, mother of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, remained in the family until purchased by Barbara Millhouse for the museum.