AFTER SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS PRA (1723-1792)Portrait of Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon small half-

AFTER SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS PRA (1723-1792)

Portrait of Jane Maxwell, Duchess of Gordon

small half-length, wearing a white dress with puffed sleeves and ribbon head-dress

oil on panel, unframed

9 3/4 x 8 in (24.8 x 20.3cm)



Provenance: Collection of David H. Reid



Literature: Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Mannings, Yale University Press, 2000 p 222 no.744c



This portrait is a reduced copy on panel by an unknown hand after the 1775 Portrait of the sitter by Reynolds (Trustees of the Goodwood Collection). There are a number of other copies known after the same portrait. These include one by Henry Raeburn at Fyvie Castle; another portrait attributed to a ' follower' of Raeburn at Blair Castle, Blair Atholl, Perthshire; two versions on enamel by Henry Bone RA also exist (one currently at Mount Stuart). There is also an original duplicate of the 1775 portrait in the collection of Lady Carthcart at Cluny Castle, Aberdeenshire.The Reynolds portrait was also engraved by William Dickinson in 1775 and a smaller plate followed in 1796.



Jane Maxwell (c.1749-1812) was the wife of the 4th Duke of Gordon. She is depicted wearing a white 'Elizabethan' costume with a miniature on a chain. It has been suggested that her dress might have been worn at a masked Ball given by the French Ambassador in 1773. A similar dress is worn by the Duchess of Devonshire in a miniature by Cosway c.1782 (Royal Collection)

The sitter was both a political hostess and a fashionable leader of society both in Edinburgh and London. Described in her own lifetime as 'having an open ruddy countenance, quick in repartee, and no one excelling her in performing the honours of the table, her society is generally courted' (The Female Jockey Club, 1794)