Euphemia Van Rensselaer (1816-1888) was the daughter of Stephen Van Rensselaer and the sister of Alexander Van Rensselaer.
She was born in Rensselaerswyck, near Albany, New York, and inherited a portion of her father's vast estate in 1839.
This picture was painted in 1842, the year before her marriage to John Church Cruger, a prominent lawyer with whom she settled on Cruger's Island near Barrytown, New York.
George Peter Alexander Healy | Euphemia White Van Rensselaer, 1842 (detail) | Metropolitan Museum of Art