Lady Mary Josephine Drummond, Countess of Castelblanco

Lady Mary Josephine Drummond, Countess of Castelblanco, dated 1716 and at the Museo del Prado in Madrid, forms the pendant to the portrait of her husband Don José de Rozas. The Countess was Scottish by birth — the Drummond family was one of the Jacobite dynasties in exile after 1688 — and her presence in Paris as part of the Spanish diplomatic circle reflects the complex aristocratic international mobility of early eighteenth-century Europe. The Jacobite exile community in Paris was significant in number and cultural presence, and the Drummonds were among its most prominent families. Oudry's portrait of a Scots-born countess of Spanish title in Paris is thus a document of the extraordinary European aristocratic world that he moved in during his early career as a society portrait painter.

Canvas pendant with the male portrait, designed for complementary display. Female aristocratic portraits of this period required particular attention to the elaborate fashionable dress — lace cap and collar, silk gown with complex decoration, jewels — that constituted the visual language of female social status. Oudry's Largillière training excelled precisely in this kind of material display, and the Countess's portrait would have demonstrated his ability to render every textile and jewel type with tactile conviction.