Portrait of a young lady, holding a dog

This portrait has recently been attributed to Mary Black, whose pastels have until now only been known through engravings. She was the daughter of the painter Thomas Black and was an assistant to Alan Ramsay (1713-1784) in the early 1760s, before establishing herself as a fashionable pastel teacher. She exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1768 in both oil and pastel; the present pastel is possibly no. 11, exhibited from 28 April 1768, entitled 'Young Lady'. Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745) annotated his catalogue with the information that she held 'a black dog in her hands'. The same work appears to have been subsequently listed in F. Walford, A short memoir of Miss Mary Black, an accomplished artist, London, 1876, as 'A Hampshire Peasant Girl with a Black Dog, Life size, three-quarter length, in crayons' (p. 17).

We are grateful to Neil Jeffares for his help with identifying and cataloguing this work.