Mrs Fox of Maidstone

Mrs Fox of Maidstone from around 1784 by John Hoppner is a portrait of a Kent gentlewoman representing the provincial gentry who commissioned portraits from fashionable London painters. The portrait reflects the wide social reach of Hoppner's patronage beyond the metropolitan elite. 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.

The gentlewoman's portrait demonstrates Hoppner's fluid technique applied to a provincial subject, with the same atmospheric warmth and broad handling he brought to his aristocratic commissions.