Portrait of a Lady, n.d.

Attr. Allan Ramsay (1713-1784), Portrait of a Lady, n.d., Oil on canvas, 49 x 39 in., Gift of the Bennett Family

Portrait of a Lady is an ambitious three-quarter length grand manner portrait of a young woman in a constructed outdoor setting. The work has been attributed to the Scottish Enlightenment artist Allan Ramsay and shares many characteristics with other portraits from that artist’s early career. Ramsay was born in Edinburgh but by 1738 had established a studio in London and quickly became the most popular portraitist in England. His early work, up to 1754, was Late Baroque in style and introduced the grand manner to a British audience. This portrait shares with other Ramsay portraits of the same period a prominent ridgeline to the nose and brows, a delicacy in the hands and a similar oval shape to the head.

The artist employs a variety of conventions: oversized columns, red swag curtain, funerary urn, and sprig of white flowers. Considering the subject’s age, the portrait may have been a coming-of-age document that announced her readiness for marriage. The iconographic purity the flowers represent speak to the young woman’s desirability as a bride.

Images such as Portrait of a Lady inspired Anglo-American artists and their clients to fashion their own colonial world in the mold of the mother culture. It is unknown when this painting came to America, but others like it by Ramsay and other English and Scottish artists could be found in the Colonies either as paintings or as reproductive engravings, and wealthy colonists patterned their own portraits along similar stylistic and iconographic lines. The image below by William Williams of the sixteen-year-old Colonial American Deborah Hall (1766) follows similar compositional patterns. Hall wears an elaborate and expensive gown, is portrayed outside in a fantastical setting, and gracefully grasps a flower.