(Edinburgh 1713–1784 Dover) Portrait of a young lady, oil on canvas, 75 x 61.7 cm, original carved and gilded frame,

We are grateful to Prof. Brian Allan, director of the Paul Mellon Institute of British Art, for his kind assistance in cataloguing this painting. Allan Ramsay numbers among the most important 18th-century English portraitists. Following his first training at the St Martin‘s Lane Academy in London, he travelled to Rome and Naples in 1736, where he was active in the workshops of Francesco Solimena and Francesco Ferdinandi (Il Imperiali). Upon his return to Edinburgh, he did the first portraits that established his early fame, such as the famous portrait of the Duke of Argyll, which the Royal Bank of Scotland used for its banknotes. Portrayals of the Scottish patrician society and nobility number among the best works in his oeuvre. Mostly executed as half-length portraits, these works from the 1740s, including the present example, stand out for their great virtuosity in the rendering of surface textures, vivid facial expressions, and naturalistic flesh tones. Between 1757 and 1759, Ramsay sojourned in Italy in the company of his second wife, Margaret Lindsay, where he portrayed wealthy travellers on their Grand Tour. Back in London, he was appointed first court painter to George III, thanks to his excellent contacts, having outrivalled his friend and colleague Thomas Hudson, who worked in a similar style and to whom our painting was once erroneously attributed. During his time as a royal portraitist, Ramsay was extraordinarily prolific; receiving numerous commissions, he could not do without workshop collaborators, such as the later-famous Philip Reinagle, who in 1770 finished fifty portraits of George III begun by Ramsay after the latter had suffered an injury that forced him to give up painting almost completely. Ramsay, whose time in Italy was most influential for his elegant portraits, spent the rest of his life in Rome and Naples.