''Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children'' (1779) is an

oil on canvas Oil painting is a painting method involving the procedure of painting with pigments combined with a drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on canvas, wood panel, or copper for several centuries. ...

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face is always predominant. In arts, a portrait may be represented as half body and even full body. If the subject in full body better r ...

Joshua Reynolds Sir Joshua Reynolds (16 July 1723 – 23 February 1792) was an English painter who specialised in portraits. The art critic John Russell (art critic), John Russell called him one of the major European painters of the 18th century, while Lucy P ...

. It was given to the

National Gallery of Art The National Gallery of Art is an art museum in Washington, D.C., United States, located on the National Mall, between 3rd and 9th Streets, at Constitution Avenue NW. Open to the public and free of charge, the museum was privately established in ...

in Washington DC in 1937. The NGA describes the work as a "majestic group portrait". Born Lady Elizabeth Howard (1746-1813), Lady Elizabeth (Howard) Delmé was the third daughter of the 4th Earl of Carlisle, and sat for Reynolds with her children John and Isabella Elizabeth in April and June 1777. Reynolds was the chief proponent of the Grand Manner, and, as the NGA points out, the two years involved in completing the portrait would have aged the children noticeably. "But Reynolds worked from abstract principles of design rather than observation of nature," the NGA writes, "One of his conceptions for Grand Manner likenesses was: ''Each person should have the expression which men of his rank generally exhibit.'' Reynolds therefore suppressed psychological individuality to gain a grandeur appropriate for these aristocrats." In Grand Manner fashion, Reynolds alluded to the Madonnas of

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...

(such as the '' Madonna of the Goldfinch'' and the '' Madonna of the Meadow'') in the triangular configuration of the sitters and alluded as well to the art of

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (; ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), mononymously known as Rembrandt was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker, and Drawing, draughtsman. He is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in ...

and

Titian Tiziano Vecellio (; 27 August 1576), Latinized as Titianus, hence known in English as Titian ( ), was an Italian Renaissance painter, the most important artist of Renaissance Venetian painting. He was born in Pieve di Cadore, near Belluno. Ti ...

in the browns of the background. Reynolds was paid three hundred pounds for the work in 1780, and touched up and revarnished the picture in 1789. Cynthia Saltzman writes in ''Old Masters, New Worlds'' (2009) that "Lady Delmé has a long, elegant face, heavy-lidded eyes, and towering powdered hair. She wears a white dress and a cloak that covers her knees in a cascade of rose-colored satin that speaks both to her beauty and to the luxury at her command." Saltzman notes that ''Lady Delmé'' is one of the finest representatives of Reynolds's intent to raise portraiture to the level of history painting. English portraiture of the period "flattered the sitter", Saltzman explains, by depicting the sitter as a member of a powerful ruling class whose very existence made the world a better place.

Her life

Lady Elizabeth Howard (1746-June 1813), married twice, first on 16 Feb 1769 to Peter Delmé, M.P. (1748-1789), and secondly on 13 January 1794 to Capt. Charles Garnier, R.N., (d.1796 by drowning).

Ruvigny Ruvigny () is a commune in the Aube department in north-central France. Geography The Barse flows through the commune. Population See also *Communes of the Aube department The following is a list of the 431 communes of the Aube dep ...

described Lady Elizabeth as "the beauty of the Court of

Queen Charlotte Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Sophia Charlotte; 19 May 1744 – 17 November 1818) was Queen of Great Britain and Ireland as the wife of King George III from their marriage on 8 September 1761 until her death in 1818. The Acts of Un ...

References

NGA: ''Lady Elizabeth Delmé and Her Children''
* ''British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries''. Oxford University Press. pp. 213–15 * Saltzman, Cynthia. 2009. ''Old Masters, New Worlds: America's Raid on Europe's Great Pictures''. Viking. Unpaged. {{Joshua Reynolds Delmé 1779 paintings Paintings in the National Gallery of Art Paintings of children Paintings of dogs Oil on canvas paintings Portraits of women Group portraits by English artists