Georgiana Maria Leicester (1793–1859), Lady de Tabley, as 'Hope'

Georgiana Maria Leicester depicted as 'Hope' at Tabley House, Cheshire, where the portrait was commissioned and where it remains, is one of the rare examples in Lawrence's oeuvre of a portrait that can still be seen in its original domestic setting. Sir John Fleming Leicester, her husband, was one of the most important collectors of contemporary British painting of his era — his gallery at Tabley House eventually contained major works by Turner, Callcott, and other leading British artists, and his advocacy for a national gallery of British art directly influenced the founding debates around what became the National Gallery. The allegorical conceit of depicting Lady de Tabley as 'Hope' — the personification usually shown as a female figure gazing toward the horizon or holding an anchor — combined the fashionable allegorical portrait mode with an implicit comment on the optimistic cultural ambitions of the Tabley circle. Lawrence painted several women in similar allegorical roles for the Leicester and related families, making Tabley House an unusually coherent statement of one collector's taste for Romantic portraiture at its most symbolically ambitious. At 243.9 by 147.3 centimeters, the full-length allegorical scale creates a work that functions as much as an artistic statement as a family document.

The allegorical treatment gives Lawrence license for a richer, more romantic palette than his standard society portraits, with flowing draperies and an idealized setting. The face, however, retains the specificity of portraiture — this is a real woman inhabiting a classical role rather than an abstract personification.