Miner Kilbourne Kellogg, born Manlius - Greek Headress - unknown - T-Shirt

This pencil and watercolour study shows a young woman in three-quarter profile, her gaze lifted past the viewer, with a tasselled headdress drawn as the real subject of the sheet.

Visual Elements & Composition

The palette is restrained, dominated by a warm cream ground (about 70% of the sheet) with warm grey and sage green in the shadows and pale pink at the cheek and chin. The face is modelled in soft pencil with light tinting, while the shoulders and neck dissolve into loose, unfinished contour lines. Her hair is drawn back from the forehead and gathered high on the crown, where a headdress of folded fabric with a patterned band sits behind it. Two long tasselled cords fall from the back of the headdress over the neck. The lower left inscription reads Greek headdress.

Meaning & Symbolism

The head serves as a stand for the costume. The layered folds and hanging cords show how a traditional head covering was worn and fastened, and the title places the study within the period's interest in recording regional dress. Kellogg, an American painter born in Manlius, New York, in 1814, made travel and topographical views in Europe and the Near East, and studies like this one come from the sketchbook material he produced on those journeys. The sheet is held in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection, and it dates to the 1860s.

Wearing the Study

Printed across the chest, the profile sits at the scale of a close, quiet view, the kind you would take in while looking at a person rather than a poster. The headdress becomes the centre of the composition, and the cords trail toward the hem, so the image follows the body's own lines. Its soft, unfinished edges suit a garment worn every day, and the study's calm mood carries from the sketchbook page onto the shirt.