Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713-1784 Dover)

Alastair Smart noted that the dress worn by the sitter in the present portrait (loc. cit.) can be compared with that worn by Mrs Susanna Campbell in Ramsay's portrait of 1749, and by Anne Craigie, who sat to the artist the following year. The latter was the sister of Cecilia Craigie (see previous lot), whose portait Ramsay painted in 1754. The van Dyck costume that these sitters are all depicted in derives from a drawing by Joseph Vanhaecken in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh (Smart, op. cit., p. 161, under no. 374).