The present lot is a playful pastiche on Castiglione's most famous work, 'One Hundred Horses' of 1728, mentioned in the catalogue of the Imperial Collection of the Qianlong emperor (reigned 1736-95), and now in the National Palace Museum outside Taipei. The present work mimics Castiglione's depiction of his subjects at leisure in a landscape by substituting western ladies for fine horses! The emphatic string of (spurious) imperial Jiaqing and Qianlong seals, and colophons by high-ranking ministers and scholars of the 18th Century further confirms the object of the present painter's mimicry. Even the scale of the scroll owes much to Castiglione's work - 'One Hundred Horses' measures 94.5 x 776.2cm

It has been suggested that the present scroll was executed on commission in the early part of this century or late in the last. The style of the ladies' dress is one piece of evidence for this