Judith Carter Moale Cutting (1843–1915)

Judith Carter Moale Cutting, a member of the prominent Cutting family of New York through her marriage to William Bayard Cutting, is here portrayed by de Madrazo y Garreta as part of what appears to have been a sustained family commission. The Moale family were themselves part of Baltimore's colonial elite, and Judith's portrait captures a woman of established American patrician rank. De Madrazo's willingness to cross the Atlantic for American commissions reflected both his professional ambition and the growing appetite among wealthy Americans for European-trained academic portraitists.

Female portraiture in the academic tradition allowed more freedom in dress and setting than male subjects. De Madrazo takes advantage of this, the sitter's gown rendered with the care for fabric texture that was a core component of society portraiture, the face handled with flattering but not dishonest specificity.