Portrait of a Lady

Richard Cosway, R.A. · 1787

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

Framed: 12.2 × 6.8 cm (4 13/16 × 2 11/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

Richard Cosway's *Portrait of a Lady* carries the quiet elegance of Georgian portraiture at its finest — a softly lit face emerging from a costume of studied refinement, painted with the assured touch of a man who understood how fashionable London wanted to see itself. Cosway was the most sought-after miniaturist of his era, appointed Principal Painter to the Prince of Wales and a fixture of late eighteenth-century London society. Though best known for his small-scale works on ivory, his oil portraits share the same hallmarks: a luminous, feathery brushstroke, an instinct for flattery that stops short of artifice, and a cool, silvery palette that feels entirely his own. In this 1787 canvas, the technique translates to larger scale without losing any of its intimacy. Cosway ran his studio from Schomberg House on Pall Mall, one of the most fashionable addresses in the city, where sitters from the aristocracy and royal circle regularly came to be painted. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made to the dimensions of the original held at the Art Institute of Chicago, using traditional pigments and canvas to preserve the tonal subtlety and soft modelling that make Cosway's portraiture so distinctive.