Portrait of a Lady in Blue

Portrait of a Lady in Blue at Perth Art Gallery is one of several unidentified female portraits in Ramsay's oeuvre where the subject's name has been lost while the work itself survives as a testament to his extraordinary skill with female portraiture. The blue of the title would have been a costly choice — blue pigments including smalt and ultramarine were expensive, and a blue silk dress signalled significant wealth and fashion consciousness. Ramsay's female portraits from the 1750s and 1760s are generally considered the finest achievements of his career, surpassing even Joshua Reynolds in their combination of sensitivity, individuality, and technical refinement. Perth Art Gallery's collection reflects the rich tradition of Scottish institutional collecting, and an unattributed Ramsay female portrait here speaks to how widely his work circulated among Scottish collectors.

The blue dress described in the title offers Ramsay an opportunity to deploy his skill with cool colour against warm flesh tones — a combination he handled with particular elegance. Blue silk requires careful observation of how the fabric folds catch and reflect light differently from warm-toned materials, and Ramsay's fluid brushwork is well suited to this challenge.