Le Lecteur (The Reader), Marble Hill House

This is a rare oil painting by the French artist Hubert François Gravelot, who helped to popularise the rococo style in England. He was better known for his engravings and taught drawing at the St Martin’s Lane Academy in London to pupils including Thomas Gainsborough. This elegant painting, of a man reading to a woman in a carefully rendered interior, was engraved in 1745 and became very popular.