A Lady of the Seventeenth Century

John Pettie's A Lady of the Seventeenth Century (1877) — the companion piece to his Knight of the same period — demonstrates his parallel interest in male and female historical costume subjects. The seventeenth century's distinctive women's fashion — rich fabrics, elaborate collars, and the dramatic chiaroscuro associated with Dutch and Flemish portraiture — gave Pettie a painterly problem he relished. Such works were not portraits of actual individuals but costume pieces — evocations of historical atmosphere through dress and manner — that offered Victorian audiences historical romance in accessible form.

Pettie handles the period costume with bravura freedom — the fabric textures and lace rendered in rich impasto that gives the clothing physical reality. His warm, rich palette draws on the Dutch Golden Age tonality appropriate to the period subject, with strong tonal contrasts creating the visual drama his work characteristically achieved.