# Portrait of a Lady [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [REYNOLDS, Sir Joshua]() - Date: 1751-1800 - Technique: Oil on canvas, 60 x 45 cm ## Commentary It is thought that the sitter of this portrait, depicted bust-length, with pearl earrings, is an as yet unidentified member of Sir Joshua Reynolds's family. The painting is unfinished, the roughly finished head stands in sharp contrast to the unfinished drapery and incomplete background. By the 1740s, Reynolds preferred to paint directly onto the canvas with no preliminary drawing, a methodology he applied throughout his career. When completing portraits, Reynolds tended to work on the head of the sitter present, whilst the costume and other details were completed later on. ## Related artworks - [Admiral Sir Edward Hughes]() - [Captain Robert Orme]() - [Colonel George K. H. Coussmaker, Grenadier Guards]() - [Commodore Augustus Keppel]() - [Continence of Scipio]() - [Cupid Untying the Zone of Venus]() - [Francis Rawdon-Hastings]() - [General Sir Banastre Tarleton]() - [George Clive and his Family with an Indian Maid]() - [Lady Cockburn and her Three Eldest Sons]() - [Lady Elizabeth Delmé and her Children]() - [Lady Sunderlin]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()