Elizabeth (née Gunning), Baroness Hamilton of Hameldon and Duchess of Argyll

Joshua Reynolds exhibited his full-length portrait of Elizabeth Gunning in the very first exhibition of contemporary art in Britain in 1760. It created a sensation and helped establish Reynolds as the leading painter of his generation. The Duchess was considered one the most beautiful woman of the age, so celebrated that crowds would gather wherever she traveled just to get a glimpse of her. Reynolds presents her as a modern Venus by giving her a pair of doves, the goddess’s attribute, and placing her alongside a fictive relief of the Judgment of Paris. The Duke of Hamilton, her dissolute first husband, commissioned the portrait shortly before he died in 1758, but it seems Reynolds retained it for several years. This is a studio replica of that painting and was probably copied by Reynolds’s assistants while the original portrait was still in his possession.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2016