Mrs Price

Mrs. Price by John Hoppner at Chequers, the country residence of the British Prime Minister, represents one of many Georgian portraits that furnish this historic house. Hoppner's portraits of fashionable women were widely collected. Hoppner's oil handling favored warm flesh tones over silvery grey half-shadows, producing an immediate vivacity that reflected his admiration for Reynolds and Gainsborough. Portrait Painter to the Prince of Wales from 1793, prolific exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Neoclassical painting engaged with a wide range of subjects—portraiture, history, landscape, genre—united by a shared formal vocabulary of clarity, restraint, and classical reference.

The sitter is presented with elegant simplicity, Hoppner's fluid handling and warm coloring creating a portrait of natural feminine grace.