brick house at the corner of Mazyck (today Logan) and Broad Streets in Charleston. The pair would have four children. Work Theus typically confined himself to uncomplicated compositions, and the bulk of his portraits are bust-length works, approximately thirty by twenty-five inches at their largest; like many portraitists of the era, he also produced miniatures. Three larger-scale works by him exist. The first, a portrait of Elizabeth, wife of Peter Manigault, dates to 1757, and was meant to be the pendant to a portrait by Allan Ramsay. That Manigault was familiar with Theus' work may be seen by the letter he wrote to his mother, which accompanied the Ramsay portrait home in April 1751, in which he wrote that "I desire Mr Theus may see it, as soon as convenient after it arrives....I’ll be extremely obliged to you, if you’ll let me know his Judgement..." The source of Mrs. Manigault's pose is unknown, but is believed to have been taken from an English mezzotint, as was common at the time. Only once more in his career did Theus work on such a scale, producing a pair of portraits, of Barnard Elliott, Jr. and his wife, around 1766. Elements of the portrait of Mrs. Elliott – including details of her costume, jewelry, and pose – have since been shown to have been taken from a number of contemporary English mezzotints. Theus frequently borrowed from English prints for his smaller works as well, and at least one historian has noted that many of his female sitters share identical poses and elements of costume, down to the folds and shadows in their dresses; each work is individualized with minor changes to various details. Male sitters in Theus portraits were typically offered a handful of poses to choose from, including the then-popular hand-in-waistcoat gesture; sometimes the artist would include a hat, tucked under the sitter's arm, to provide variety. In other portraits, Theus preferred the shorter bust-length portrait type; in either case, the format chosen allowed him to avoid having to paint the subject's hands.Portraits of children allowed Theus greater variety in choosing the sitters' poses, and he exercised this freedom in a number of works. In some he chose to use a landscape background, rather than the plain backdrop reserved for his adult subjects; others are allotted a variety of props, including a fishing line and hook, an acorn and a pet squirrel,