Characterized by the strong sense of pattern typical of the style of itinerant painters, Jonathan Budington’s portrait of the Eliot family in a book-filled interior epitomizes the educated modern family that emerged in the mid-1700s. Proudly attesting to his good behavior, five-year-old Ely Augustus displays the chapter "Duty to Parents" in John Ely’s popular book The Child’s Instructor. The child’s father, George Eliot, was a prominent farmer and property owner; on the bookshelf, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations hints at Eliot’s liberal economic philosophy. Eliot’s wife, Patience, holds an elegant silk drawstring bag, which marks her as a woman of leisure and refinement and was probably a product of her own skill at hand embroidery.