Три дамы, украшающие герму Гименея

This began as an engagement present. In 1773 an Irish gentleman named Luke Gardiner commissioned Reynolds to paint his bride-to-be, Elizabeth Montgomery, together with her two sisters, Barbara and Anne, known in society as the Irish Graces. Reynolds shows the three of them draping a garland over a pillar topped with the head of Hymen, the ancient god of marriage, a graceful way of advertising that these young women were ready to wed. He posed them in what he called noble historical attitudes, lifted from admired old masters such as Poussin, hoping to raise portraiture toward high art. Not everyone was persuaded, and some accused him of borrowing too freely. When it went on show at the Royal Academy in 1774, it fixed the sisters forever at the threshold of marriage, flowers in hand.