Portrait of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)

Mary Wollstonecraft is remembered for A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) and other works. Her second daughter was also a famous author: Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin became Mary Shelley when she married. This portrait’s original was painted when Wollstonecraft was just visibly pregnant. She died of puerperal fever 10 days after giving birth, leaving her husband, William Godwin, and another daughter, as well as the infant Mary. In 1803 Aaron Burr commissioned this copy of the portrait that hung in the Godwins’ parlor as Mary Godwin grew up. Burr, infamous for shooting Alexander Hamilton, was a friend of William Godwin and a supporter of Wollstonecraft’s feminist values, on which he raised his daughter, Theodosia, who once owned this painting.