Anne Catharine Hoof Green

Born in the Netherlands

Anne Catherine Hoof Green achieved professional success in an era when most middle-class white women were limited to domestic responsibilities. Following the death of her husband, Jonas Green, in 1767, she managed his printing shop in Annapolis, Maryland, earning enough money to pay off his debts and purchase the building that housed the printing press, her six children, and herself. She became the Maryland Assembly’s official printer of government documents and reported on events and opinions leading up to the Revolutionary War as editor and publisher of the Maryland Gazette.

Green expressed her sense of accomplishment by commissioning this portrait just two years after her husband’s death. Her portraitist, Charles Willson Peale, made one crucial deviation from the conventions of female portraiture that he had learned while studying in London. In her lap, Green holds an issue of her newspaper, the Maryland Gazette, with the words ANNAPOLIS PRINTER clearly legible.

Nacia en los Países Bajos

Anne Catherine Hoof Green tuvo éxito profesional en tiempos en que la mayoría de las mujeres blancas de clase media estaban limitadas a las labores domésticas. Tras la muerte de su esposo, Jonas Green, en 1767, administró la imprenta de este en Annapolis, Maryland, y logró ingresos suficientes para pagar las deudas y comprar el edificio donde estaban la imprenta y el hogar de ella y sus seis hijos. Pasó a ser la impresora oficial de documentos de la Asamblea de Maryland y como editora del Maryland Gazette reportó eventos y opiniones en los umbrales de la Guerra de Independencia.

Green expresó su satisfacción por sus logros encargando este retrato apenas dos años después de morir su esposo. Su retratista, Charles Willson Peale, alteró una convención crucial de los retratos femeninos que había aprendido estudiando en Londres. Green sostiene en su falda un número de su periódico, el Maryland Gazette, con las palabras IMPRENTA DE ANNAPOLIS muy legibles.

Sitter’s son Frederick Green [1788]; his sister Augusta Green [Mrs. Robert Denny]; descended in her family to Mrs. Frederick Hoban; her niece Mrs. Edward Alexander; Edward R. Alexander, Stirling-Haven, East Hampton, N.Y., [1953]; their daughter Sylvia Hoban Conkling; sold to (Lawrence A. and Barbara Fleischman) around 1960; purchased by Robert McNeil, Jr.; purchased 1989 by (Kennedy Galleries, New York); Governor’s Mansion Foundation, Annapolis; donative purchase 1991 NPG