Portrait of a lady, three-quarter-length, in a white satin Van Dyck dress, trimmed with blue bows and lace, beside a column, in a landscape

This unrecorded portrait is entirely characteristic of Ramsay's work in London in the early 1740s. The sitter's Van Dyck costume and pearl necklace can be compared with Ramsay's portraits, also painted in 1741, of Jemima, Countess of Hardwicke (1722-1797; see A. Smart, Allan Ramsay: A Complete catalogue of his paintings, Yale, 1999, p. 235, nos. 77 and 79). 'Van Dyck' costume was fashionable in both society and portraiture in the 1740s and Ramsay, along with other contemporary portraitists, painted a number of his sitters in this vein.