Isabella, viscontessa Molyneux, poi contessa di Sefton

The Royal Academy in London held its very first exhibition in 1769, and Thomas Gainsborough, one of its founding members, sent this full-length down from Bath, where he was then working. The sitter is Isabella Stanhope, who had married Viscount Molyneux only months before and sat for him early that year, newly a bride of about 20. It was the grandest portrait of a woman Gainsborough had painted up to then, and he clearly meant it to hold its own in that company. She stands in a shimmer of silvery satin built up with long, thin, feathery strokes, the kind of loose handling that set him apart from the tighter finish of his rival Joshua Reynolds, the Academy's first president.