The Hon. Theresa Robinson, Mrs John Parker (1745-1775)

Reynolds's large full-length of Theresa Robinson from 1771 is one of his most accomplished formal female portraits, painted for the Parker family of Saltram House in Devon — one of the clients with whom he maintained the deepest and most sustained professional relationship. Theresa Robinson had married John Parker (later 1st Baron Boringdon) in 1769, and this portrait was likely commissioned to celebrate the marriage, as was conventional for significant unions in the Georgian aristocracy. The full-length format — over 230 centimetres tall — required Reynolds's most ambitious compositional thinking, and he responds with a figure of serene authority standing in a landscape setting that recalls his Italian study of Venetian portraiture. Reynolds also painted Theresa Parker with her son in 1778 (also at Saltram), creating across the two works a record of the sitter's life from youthful wife to mature mother. Her early death in 1775 — she was only thirty — makes these images additionally poignant. The National Trust's preservation of the Saltram collection in situ means that Reynolds's Parker family portraits remain in the house for which they were made, a condition of exceptional art-historical significance.

The portrait presents the sitter with elegant refinement. Reynolds's handling creates an image of aristocratic feminine grace.