Sarah, Mrs Francis Smith

Sarah, Mrs Francis Smith at the Ashmolean Museum is the companion portrait to Francis Smith, both held in Oxford's great university museum. Companion portraits of husband and wife were standard commissions in Georgian portraiture — they were typically made at the same time, on canvases of matching dimensions, to hang as a pair. The Ashmolean's holding of both works suggests they were acquired together, preserving the intended relationship between the two portraits. Sarah Smith's identity is entirely defined in the title by her husband's name, a convention of the period that subsumes female identity into marital status. Opie's female portraits consistently resist this subsumption at the level of characterisation — his female subjects retain strong individual presence regardless of how they are named or catalogued.

A companion female portrait would mirror the compositional arrangement of its male counterpart — often turned slightly in the opposing direction so the pair face each other when hung side by side. Opie's female technique softens the bold chiaroscuro of his male portraits somewhat, achieving a lighter modelling that conventional taste associated with femininity without sacrificing the essential sculptural quality of his approach.