“Picturing the Resilient Self: William S. Elwell’s Portrait of Dolley Madison and Older Women’s Fame”

This article considers how Dolley Madison (1768-1849), a former First Lady of the United States of America, used art and popular media to shape and control her public persona during the last decades of her life. Building on recent research on the largely unfavorable reception of famous older women who remained active in the public sphere past middle age, it presents Madison as a notable “exception to the rule” that older women were discouraged from maintaining or pursuing their fame during the nineteenth century. Further, it presents an argument for how Madison’s self-presentation in art and visual culture contributed to the public’s positive reception of her. By examining William S. Elwell’s portrait of Madison at seventy-nine years of age (1848), the portrait’s various sources, and discussions of Madison published in the Washington D.C. press, it ultimately suggests the following: 1) that Madison and Elwell carefully adapted iconography from her earlier portraits and self-presentation when shaping the new portrait; 2) that Madison’s earlier public persona was able to persevere throughout the decades because of its distance from discourses on creation and procreation; and 3) that Madison adapted this early persona both to assert that age had not fundamentally changed her and to remind the public of its obligation to support her in her advanced age. In its discussion of these three major points, the article expands current scholarly research on the relationship between women’s fame and older age. It suggests that famous older women were not discouraged from remaining in the public eye exclusively because of their age. Rather, they found the public hostile to their continued presence when the nature of their fame and celebrity could not easily be reconciled with their new phase of life.