English miniaturist George Lethbridge Saunders spent close to a decade in America, producing vividly colored, fluid portraits such as that of Miss Charlotte Patterson. The sitter was the daughter of Joseph Patterson, a wealthy iron merchant and president of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Her aunt was Betsy Patterson, who married Jerome Bonaparte in 1803. On December 23, 1839, Charlotte Nichols Patterson married Charles Smith Gilmor in their native city of Baltimore. Their marriage may have provided the impetus to enlist Saunders to paint this miniature of Charlotte. The artist also made a portrait of Charles, probably for the same commission, reinforcing the likelihood that the miniatures would have been considered a marital pair and tokens of love. Sadly, the young couple’s union lasted less than seven years, due to Charlotte’s death at the age of twenty-six.

Born in Bristol, England, Saunders worked solely as a miniaturist. In the 1820s and 1830s, he exhibited in London at the prestigious Royal Academy and spent the next decade in the United States. Between 1841 and 1843, Saunders’s work was included in exhibitions in New York and Philadelphia, though during this time and afterward he also traveled throughout the East Coast to find commissions. A miniature by Saunders in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bears an inscription that identifies the sitter as a resident of Baltimore and the date as 1841; therefore, the portraits of Charlotte Gilmor and her husband were probably painted around the same time, shortly after their marriage. Saunders returned to England in 1851.