Lot Essay
By family repute, the sitter in this picture is Anne, wife of James Ogsten of Kildrummy Castle, Alford, Aberdeenshire. Ogsten, whose fortune was founded in soap manufacture, amassed a remarkable collection of Victorian pictures, chief amongst which was Sir John Everett Millais's The Proscribed Royalist, which fetched £780,000 when offered at Christie's, London, on 25 November 1983.
The picture was well received by the Art Journal, which referred to it as 'a charming illustration of the life of the Empire period, a single figure of a young girl in a white dress standing before a console table and looking, over a bunch of roses, which she holds in her hand, at her own reflection the mirror before her.' Henry Blackburn also liked the picture describing it as 'a harmony of umber, greenish brown, and gold tones. The girl wears an Empire gown with blue shoulder-pieces'.
The picture was well received by the Art Journal, which referred to it as 'a charming illustration of the life of the Empire period, a single figure of a young girl in a white dress standing before a console table and looking, over a bunch of roses, which she holds in her hand, at her own reflection the mirror before her.' Henry Blackburn also liked the picture describing it as 'a harmony of umber, greenish brown, and gold tones. The girl wears an Empire gown with blue shoulder-pieces'.