John Jennings Esq., his Brother and Sister-in-Law

Roslin painted the English merchant John Jennings with his brother and sister-in-law in 1769, a group portrait demonstrating his mastery of the conversation piece format. Roslin, a Swedish portraitist who had settled in Paris and been admitted to the Académie royale in 1753, was celebrated above all for his ability to render silk, satin, and lace with a material immediacy that made him the most sought-after portraitist in France for aristocratic and wealthy bourgeois sitters. The Jennings portrait shows an English family commissioning a fashionable French painter, reflecting the cosmopolitan art market of the mid-eighteenth century where Paris set the standard for sophisticated portraiture. Roslin's virtuosic rendering of fabrics — the shimmering quality of silk dress, the delicate transparency of lace — was admired throughout Europe, and his portraits were collected from Stockholm to St. Petersburg. The Nationalmuseum in Stockholm holds this among several works by the artist who remained one of the most celebrated Swedish artists working abroad in the eighteenth century.

Roslin's legendary skill with textiles shows in the shimmering silk dress, rendered with extraordinary precision. The elegant composition reflects his cosmopolitan Franco-Swedish style.