Cleveland Museum of Art

The Right Honorable Lady Mary Radcliffe (1732-98), Wife of Francis Eyre, Esq.

Francis Cotes

Date

1755

Medium

pastel on laid paper lined with canvas

Culture

England, 18th century

Department

Drawings

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

A founding member of the Royal Academy and one of the leading fashionable portrait painters of his generation, Francis Cotes was a pioneer of pastel painting in England. Here, in her marriage portrait, the young Lady Mary Radcliffe is regal in a Turkish-inspired, peacock blue mantle decorated with gold and trimmed with ermine. Pearls and feathers adorn her hair and a décolleté scarlet bodice reveals an expanse of porcelain skin. Francis Cotes described his pastel works as "decorative in a very high degree in apartments that are not too large; for having their surface dry, they partake in appearance of the effect of Fresco, and by candle light are luminous and beautiful beyond all other pictures."

The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata.