Attributed to Nehemiah Partridge (1683-c. 1737)
Ariaantje Coeymans Verplanck (1672-1743)
[Mrs. David Verplanck]
Albany County, oil on canvas, c. 1722
AIHA Collection: Bequest of Gertrude Watson

This large, imposing portrait is the earliest full-size portrait of a woman in colonial America. Ariaantje Coeymans was born in Albany in 1672. Her father was Barent Pieterse Coeymans, a wealthy merchant, landowner, and founder of Coeymans, New York. In 1723, at the age of 51, she married 28-year-old David Verplanck of Albany. This painting was probably commissioned as a wedding portrait. The necklace of corn kernel beads she wears may be a reference to the Native American corn ground in the Coeymans' gristmill.

Nehemiah Partridge was an itinerant New England portrait painter who worked at intervals in the Albany-Schenectady area between 1718 and 1725. His portraits represent members of the powerful patrician families of the area, including Schuylers, Wendells, Ten Broecks, Van Schaicks, Sanders and Livingstons.

Ariaantie Coeymans Verplanck

by Nehemia Partridge

A Sculptor's Studio

by Tompkins H. Matteson

The Fondey Family

by Ezra Ames

Still Life: Fruit in a Classical Setting

by John Vanderlyn, Jr.

The Fist

by Alice Morgan Wright

Margin of Silence

by Kay Sage

Thoroughbreds

by Walter L. Greene

Bust of Young Girl

by Charles Calverley

Library at Arbor Hill (Olcott Interior)

by Walter Launt Palmer

Emma Turner Banks

by Charles Loring Elliot