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 This portrait bust of Carrara marble was sculpted by the American artist Horatio Greenough (1805-1852) while he was living in Pisa, Italy, and Mr. and Mrs. White were traveling in Europe. Ellen Adair White Beatty was Mary Skipwith Buie's aunt.
Mrs. White was known as a professional beauty as were Lilly Langtry and Virginie Avegno (better known as Madame X in the John Singer Sargent portrait; Madame Avegno and Mrs. White have strikingly similar features and complexions.) While internationally known for her superior intellectual powers and beauty, Mrs. White numbered among her friends Washington Irving, John Quincy Adams, Tallyrand, Prince Louis Napoleon (Napoleon III), and Caroline, Queen of Naples.
Greenough was born in Boston and encouraged to become a sculptor by Washington Allston (America's foremost exponent of Romanticism in painting during the 19th century). His studies began at the Boston Athenaeum where he made copies of casts of European sculpture. He later attended Harvard and, at the age of nineteen, went to Europe. He returned home in a few years due to illness and soon after executed his first important portrait, a bust of President Adams. Greenough's portraits were sufficiently successful that in 1832 he was commissioned to do a monumental statue of George Washington for the rotunda in the United States Capitol. Greenough returned to Europe where he worked on this project from 1833 to 1841. In addition to this sculpture, Greenough accepted other commissions while in Pisa, including the portrait bust of Ellen Adair White.
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