Accompanied by a letter written by John A. Mahey, Assistant Director of the Peale Museum in Baltimore, dated August 23, 1966.

Mary Catherine Dail (1826-1904) was born in Cambridge, Maryland and was the daughter of Daniel Dail (1791-1863), an architect and builder of Baltimore, and Elizabeth Block (c. 1794-1836). Mary Catherine Dail married Lemuel G. Taylor (d. 1859), who was a native of England and a captain of the Chesapeake Bay steamboat "Maryland," who was living in Baltimore circa 1810 and later relocated to Annapolis. Lemuel G. Taylor, Mary Catherine Dail, their daughter Mary W. Taylor (1858-1904) and her husband Harry F. Stuart are all buried in the Taylor lot in Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore.

In the subject painting, one of five commissioned works by Peale of members of the Dail Family, the sitter is dressed in fashionable ermine. According to John Mahey, the former Assistant Director of the Peale Museum, in no other instance did Peale paint so many works of a single family. Mahey posits that Peale painted more than 100 portraits during her Baltimore years, of which only 75 were identified by 1967, including the present work.

The frame is likely original and could have been produced by Daniel Dail, the sitter's father and master carpenter.