Jane Fleming, later Countess of Harrington

Reynolds's large full-length of Jane Fleming, later Countess of Harrington, from 1778 represents his mature female portraiture at its most socially ambitious. Jane Fleming was among the celebrated beauties of her era, moving in the highest circles of fashionable London society and later becoming a prominent figure at Court as wife of the 3rd Earl of Harrington. Reynolds painted her at the height of his command of the full-length format — the format he had developed from Van Dyck's aristocratic English portraits and Gainsborough's contemporary alternative — deploying a compositional approach that balances the grandeur appropriate to a formal commission with the individual characterization that distinguished his sitters from conventional fashion plates. The painting's dimensions (nearly 240 centimetres tall) required Reynolds's most ambitious compositional thinking, and the result — a figure of quiet authority in a landscape setting — demonstrates the synthesis of Italian compositional lessons and English aristocratic naturalness that defined his achievement in female portraiture. The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens in California holds the canvas as part of its substantial British art collection, which documents the sustained American appetite for Reynolds's full-scale aristocratic portraits.

The portrait presents the beauty with sophisticated elegance. Reynolds's flowing handling and warm palette create an image of refined femininity.