''Lady Caroline Howard'' (1778) is an

oil on canvas Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest o ...

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this r ...

by Joshua Reynolds.

History

Lady Caroline was the daughter of

Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (28 May 1748 – 4 September 1825) was a British peer, statesman, diplomat, and author. Life He was the son of Henry Howard, 4th Earl of Carlisle and his second wife Isabella Byron. His mother was a ...

, and Margaret Caroline Howard. She was a spirited child, according to her father, and was seven years old when she sat to Reynolds. The portrait was commissioned by the Earl, and exhibited in 1779 at the Royal Academy before it was hung in

Castle Howard Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, within the civil parish of Henderskelfe, located north of York. It is a private residence and has been the home of the Carlisle branch of the Howard family for more than 300 years ...

. National Gallery of Art acquired the portrait in 1937.

Description

Reynolds was a chief proponent of the

Grand Manner Grand Manner refers to an idealized aesthetic style derived from classicism and the art of the High Renaissance. In the eighteenth century, British artists and connoisseurs used the term to describe paintings that incorporated visual metaphors i ...

and, to that end, the roses Lady Caroline plucks from an urn may have been intended to suggest Chastity, Beauty, and Love, the attributes of

Venus Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is sometimes called Earth's "sister" or "twin" planet as it is almost as large and has a similar composition. As an interior planet to Earth, Venus (like Mercury) appears in Earth's sky never f ...

and the Three Graces. The NGA writes "Reynolds has captured some of Lady Caroline's complexity in the serious, intent expression of her attractive face, her averted gaze, and the tension implied in her closed left hand ... the painting is broadly and fluidly executed in thick, opaque layers, with thin translucent glazes in the background."

References

NGA: ''Lady Caroline Howard''
Portraits by Joshua Reynolds 1778 paintings Collections of the National Gallery of Art {{England-stub