Mme Grace Dalrymple Elliott (1754?–1823)

When this went on show at the Royal Academy in 1778, London already knew Grace Dalrymple Elliott by reputation. Married off young to a doctor, she had been through a very public divorce two years earlier and was now moving among titled lovers, and it was one of them, Lord Cholmondeley, who paid Gainsborough for the picture. He gave her the towering powdered hair of the moment and a shimmering fall of yellow silk, and set her turning in profile as if caught mid-stride. Grace lived on into the French Revolution, was in Paris through the Terror, and left a memoir of those years that people still read.