Portrait of a Woman

Irish artist Adam Buck was deeply interested in classical Greek and Roman vase painting. To give a Neoclassical feeling to this miniature, his subject is shown in elegant profile on a draped chaise.

The vividly colored, almost stormy sky, balances the cool sensuality of the languid figure. The woman in this portrait wears the revealing neoclassical attire made popular at Napoleon´s court. Her sleeveless white gown, held at the shoulder with a Wedgwood cameo brooch, and her loose gather of curls à l´antique, were the height of fashion in the early 1800s.