Alexander and Eliza also rescued a thirty-five-year-old painter, Ralph Earl, who had painted battle scenes of the Revolution and studied under Benjamin West in London. Upon returning to New York in 1786, Earl lost his money in dissolute habits and was tossed into debtors’ prison. Moved by his plight, Hamilton induced Eliza “to go to the debtors’ jail to sit for her portrait and she induced other ladies to do the same,” wrote James Hamilton. “By this means, the artist made a sufficient sum to pay his debts.”
