John and Abigail Adams The artist Gilbert Stuart painted these portraits in 1800; Adams was sixty-five and his wife was fifty-six. A friend once listed Adams’s shortcomings as a politician: “He can’t dance, drink, game, flatter, promise, dress, swear with gentlemen, and small talk and flirt with the ladies.” But luckily, Adams had a secret weapon to keep him resilient: Abigail, his wife, a woman of astute intellect and wisdom.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.