Maria Taylor Hunt [Mrs. Ward Hunt, d. 1912], Utica, New York;[1] bequeathed to her niece, Caroline Matilda Van Rensselaer Hillhouse [Mrs. Phineas P. Hillhouse], Cambridge, Massachusetts;[2] (Charles Henry Hart, New York, and Frank W. Bayley, Boston); sold 1917 to Franklin Bulkeley Smith [1864-1918], Worcester, Massachusetts;[3] (his estate sale, American Art Association, New York, 23 April 1920, no. 141); purchased by W. S. Burke for Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York;[4] his estate; sold as part of the Clarke collection on 29 January 1936, through (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1942 to NGA. [1] Henry T. Tuckerman, _Book of the Artists: American Artist Life Comprising Biographical and Critical Sketches of American Artists_, New York, 1867, 5th printing, 1870, reprint, New York, 1966, 109, 628, and George C. Mason, _The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart_, New York, 1879, 282, list the portrait as owned by her husband Ward Hunt. Mrs. Hunt is listed as the owner in Museum of Fine Arts, "Portraits Painted by Stuart...taken from Mason's _Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart_." _Exhibition of Portraits Painted by Gilbert Stuart_, Boston, 1880, 61. Mrs. Hunt is the first documented owner of the portrait, which was assumed to have come to her from her stepmother Caroline Matilda Yates Taylor [Mrs. James Taylor, d. 1866], Albany, New York, the sitter's daughter. [2] Maria T. Hunt's will (Surrogate's Court, Oneida County, New York; copy, NGA curatorial file) lists her sister Sarah A. Van Rensselaer and her niece Caroline Van Rensselaer Hillhouse as her primary heirs; the inventory of her estate lists "2 family portraits (oil) with gold frames, latter damaged." Because Mrs. Van Rensselaer was deceased, Mrs. Hillhouse inherited the portraits. This provenance is repeated in American Art Association, _Catalogue of the Frank Bulkeley Smith Collection Sale [23 April 1920]_, New York, Smith 1920, unpaginated, lot 141, which states that the portrait went to Mrs. Hillhouse under the terms of Mrs. Taylor's will. [3] Lawrence Park, _Gilbert Stuart: An Illustrated Descriptive List of his Works, with an Account of his Life by John Hill Morgan and an Appreciation by Royal Cortissoz_, 4 vols., New York, 1926, 244-245. [4] "Paintings Sold at Auction, Season of 1919-1920," _American Art Annual_ 17 (1920), 331. The name of the seller and the date of purchase are recorded in a copy of _Portraits by Early American Painters of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Collected by Thomas B. Clarke_ (Exh. cat., Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928) annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library).