Portrait of a Woman (said to be Lady Scott)

In February 1896 the New York builder David H. King Jr. sold his art collection at auction. His firm had put up the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty and the Washington Square Arch, and like many rich New Yorkers of the day he had bought English and French pictures. The sale catalogue listed this canvas as a Reynolds portrait of Lady Frances Scott, painted in 1759. It went for 1,650 dollars to the Blakeslee Galleries, and probably from them to George Robert White, a Boston businessman. White left his pictures to his sister, Harriet Bradbury, and she left them to the Museum of Fine Arts in 1930. The museum kept the name Reynolds and dropped the date, and it describes the sitter only as said to be Lady Scott.