Portrait of a young aristocratic maiden sitting by a fountain in a garden in the company of a lamb

Oil on canvas

127 x 102 cm

Framed 143 x 119 cm.

We show you this splendid example of 18th century English portraiture, depicting a young maiden in the garden of her estate and seated near a gushing fountain; one hand is placed on the back of a lamb, a convention we often find in portraiture of this period, which brings to mind romantic evocations of pastoral simplicity popular in England at the time.

The maiden is depicted wearing a silk dress in sapphire blue shades that, although extremely simple, is very refined and finished with great attention to detail. On her head she wears a snow-white lace hairpin embellished with a rose, and in her hands she holds a rosebud, while a garland of flowers encircles the neck of the small lamb at her side.

This is probably the girl's pet animal, but it also gives the portrait a strong symbolic connotation in portraiture. In fact, we know that the animal is the iconographic attribute of Saint Agnes, the patron saint of virgins and women about to be married, symbolising her chaste innocence.

It is therefore likely that this painting was therefore commissioned as an engagement portrait.

By carefully scrutinising the compositional and stylistic details, we are inclined to attribute its authorship to the hand of the painter George Knapton (London 1698 - 1778), a highly regarded London portrait painter known for his pastel as well as oil paintings.

During his career he painted several portraits of children and young boys of the English aristocracy, very similar in type to ours.

By way of example, we may mention: the 'Portrait of Katherine Miller with her spaniel' (private collection), the 'Portrait of Elizabeth Hatch in a blue dress' (Christie's, London, 08 Jun 2006), the 'Portrait of a maiden sitting in a garden' (Sotheby's, London, 30 Nov 2000), the 'Portrait of a Maiden' (Bonhams, London, 04 Apr 2023), the 'Portrait of William Napier' (Christie's, London, Nov 1991) and finally the group portrait depicting 'The Second Earl of Egmont and his Sisters in a Landscape' (originally Avon Castle Collection, Hampshire).

He was a pupil of Jonathan Richardson from 1715 to 1722 and in 1720 one of the founders of St. Martin's Lane Academy together with Louis Chéron and John Vanderbank.

He spent seven years in Italy, from 1725 to 1732, where he acquired considerable knowledge of the Old Masters and was a founding member of the Society of Amateurs, formed in Rome in the early 1730s. As an official portraitist he executed twenty-three portraits of members of the society in a variety of costumes between 1741 and 1749.