Sir James Gray, 2nd Bt.

Rosalba Carriera's 1744 pastel of Sir James Gray, now in the J. Paul Getty Museum, was made toward the end of her active career — she would lose her sight within a few years and cease working entirely. Gray was a British diplomat and antiquarian, serving as minister to the court of Naples, and his Italian posting brought him into contact with the Venetian-born Carriera, whose reputation by the 1740s was such that anyone of social consequence in Italy sought her out. Carriera had pioneered the use of ivory as a support for miniature portraits in the early eighteenth century and transformed pastel from a preparatory medium into one suitable for finished, prestigious commissions. Her ability to capture fleeting surface effects — the sheen of silk, the texture of powdered hair, the softness of skin — made her works particularly prized among collectors of the Rococo generation. This relatively late portrait of a British diplomat demonstrates the sustained quality of her work even as her eyesight deteriorated, and it crossed the Atlantic into American collecting, where it found its present home.

Carriera's pastel technique involves building up layers of soft chalk on prepared paper, blending tones directly with her fingers or a stump to create gradations impossible in oil. The characteristic luminosity of her flesh tones derives from allowing the paper's own warm tone to contribute to the mid-tone register, reserving purest white chalk for the highest lights.