Ann Hall has been described as the most successful miniature painter active in early nineteenth-century New York, renowned for her engaging portraits, especially of children and young brides.

[1] Although many of her compositions strike modern audiences as sentimental,[2] her popularity during her lifetime and the significance of her career are attested by the high prices paid for her miniatures (often five hundred dollars per commission) and her election to the National Academy of Design, New York.

[4][5] Her considerable artistic talent was encouraged by her family and at a young age she was experimenting with several different techniques, including cutting silhouettes, modeling figures in wax, and executing flower pictures and still lifes in watercolor and pencil.

[1][8] As Charlotte Streifer Rubinstein has observed, what has been described by critics as the "glowing 'old master' color" of her miniatures resulted from her close study of early modern art.

[12] Many of the New York City luminaries of the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s who visited Eliza and her husband posed for Ann, expanding the artist's circle of patrons and supporters.

[9] Mohalbi had been captured at the age of seven by the Turks during the Greek War of Independence[14] and was ransomed by an American merchant who had her brought to Boston in 1827 to be raised with his family.