Elizabeth Kerr, Marchioness of Lothian

Reynolds painted Elizabeth Kerr, Marchioness of Lothian, around 1769, and dressed her with a purpose. Rather than the exact court fashion of the moment, he put her in a loose gown modelled on the ancient Greek chiton, with a blue silk mantle edged in ermine to mark her rank. This was a deliberate Reynolds tactic. He believed clothing painted in the latest style would look absurd within a decade, so he reached for something vaguely antique and timeless instead. Her towering, ornamented hairstyle, though, he could not resist recording, and it dates the picture precisely to the end of the 1760s. She was in her mid-twenties, wife of the man who would become the 5th Marquess of Lothian. A printmaker copied the portrait as an engraving the next year, softening a few details of the dress.