Portrait of a lady, half-length, in a white dress, unfinished

This portrait can be dated stylistically to the second half of the 1770s, a turning point in Romney's career, when, having returned from a two year study trip to Italy with Ozias Humphry, Romney set up his studio in London on the fashionable south side of Cavendish Square (a space formerly occupied by Francis Cotes) and set about establishing himself as London's foremost portrait painter, in competition with Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough. Romney gained commissions from many leading aristocratic families during this period, including Lord Warwick, Sir George Warren and Lord Gower, President of the Council in Lord North's government. His handling of paint is noticeably looser and more spontaneous after 1775, and he stopped making extensive preliminary studies for major works, instead choosing to paint straight on to the primed canvas. The present work, of an unknown sitter, may therefore constitute an unfinished commission, rather than a preliminary study.