Portrait of a Woman

Reynolds's Portrait of a Woman belongs to the category of female portraits he produced throughout his career for the English aristocracy and upper middle class — the idealized presentations of women that combined individual likeness with the visual conventions of ideal feminine beauty he had absorbed from Italian Renaissance painting. His ability to balance the specific individual — her face, her expression, her character — with the general ideal — her elevated setting, her poised bearing, her Grand Manner presentation — created images that satisfied both the documentary function of portraiture and the aspirational function of representing the sitter as they wished to be seen.

The very early portrait shows Reynolds's pre-Italian style, with careful, somewhat stiff handling. The limited palette and simple composition reflect the conventions of mid-18th-century English portraiture before Reynolds revolutionized the genre.