Cornelis Lansing was a fifth generation descendent of orignal Dutch settlers of Albany. Both his parents Catharina Lieverse and Abraham Jacob Lansing spoke Dutch, and Lansing, too, spoke the language throughout his life. His parents also founded the town of Lansingburg just to the north of Troy, New York. When Lansing sat for this portrait, he was at least seventy years old and continued to wear his hair in a tightly wrapped queue in back, an old-fashioned treatment in the 1820s or 1830s when the unidentified artist painted Lansing enjoying his pipe.