This 1922 oil portrait by Archibald John Motley Jr., of his grandmother, Emily Sims Motley, has been decoupaged onto an English saucer by Royal Albert Crown China. The pattern Lady Hamilton was produced between 1939 and 1999.

5.25” x .875” x 5.25”

Archibald Motley Jr., was one of the first African Americans to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This portrait is of his grandmother, who was born enslaved by the Kittredge family in Kentucky in 1842. Emily lived through the civil war on a sugar plantation in Louisiana and lived to be 87 years old. The painting is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.. Her hands are as beautiful as her face in this painting and I regret to have edited them out of this circle. 

Lady Hamilton was an English maid, model, dancer, and actress in the late 18th century, a demi-mode of wealthy, married men, including Lord Nelson, and was a favorite model of the portrait artist George Romney.