Portrait of Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick

Reynolds painted Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick around 1786, during the final phase of his active career when his eyesight was deteriorating and his studio output was beginning to decline in volume if not always in quality. Lady Louisa was the daughter of the 1st Earl of Upper Ossory and moved in the highest circles of Anglo-Irish and English aristocratic society; she later married the 2nd Earl of Massereene. Reynolds had been painting members of the Fitzpatrick family for decades, and this late portrait reflects the sustained patronage relationships that provided both the commercial backbone of his practice and the social connections that made him a genuine participant in the Georgian elite rather than merely its hired visual chronicler. Reynolds ceased painting entirely in 1789, only three years after this portrait's completion, and died in February 1792 having been blind in one eye for the final years of his life. The portrait thus sits close to the end of one of the most productive careers in the history of British painting — nearly forty years during which Reynolds transformed the status, the theory, and the practice of painting in England from a skilled but socially marginal craft into a respected intellectual profession.

The late portrait demonstrates Reynolds's mature command of female portraiture, with soft, luminous handling of the complexion and elegant pose. His experimental use of pigments, including fugitive colors that have sometimes deteriorated over time, is characteristic of his technically adventurous but occasionally unstable practice.