Portrait of Elizabeth Kerr, née Fortescue, Marchioness of Lothian

The portrait of Elizabeth Kerr, Marchioness of Lothian from 1770, now in the Clark Art Institute, was painted during Kauffmann's successful London period when she was the most fashionable female portrait painter in England. Her portraits of British aristocratic women combined classical grace with fashionable elegance, offering an alternative to the more dramatic approaches of Reynolds and Gainsborough while satisfying the same elite clientele. The Marchioness of Lothian was a Scottish noblewoman connected to the Kerr family, one of the great Border families of Scotland, and her London portrait represents the intersection of Scottish aristocratic culture with the fashionable Neoclassicism that Kauffmann embodied. The Clark Art Institute in Williamstown holds an important collection of European painting, and this Kauffmann is among its significant British and Continental works from the Neoclassical period. Kauffmann's elegant approach to aristocratic female portraiture — soft color, graceful pose, classical accessories — gave her sitters the combination of dignity and refinement that the Marchioness and her contemporaries sought from a painter who was not merely technically accomplished but culturally prestigious, having absorbed the Neoclassical ideals of Rome firsthand.

The portrait demonstrates Kauffmann's elegant approach to aristocratic female portraiture, with soft color and graceful pose that balance classical idealization with naturalistic likeness.