A Lady of Cleveland, U.S.A.

A Lady of Cleveland, U.S.A. documents the cosmopolitan social world Hugh Ramsay navigated during his Paris years. The sitter, an American woman from the prosperous Ohio city, would have been one of the many well-travelled Anglophone patrons and expatriates who crossed paths with young painters in the studios and salons of early-twentieth-century Paris. Ramsay's ability to secure such commissions speaks to his quickly growing reputation. Painted in 1902 and now in the Art Gallery of South Australia, the portrait offers a rare glimpse of the transatlantic clientele that sustained ambitious colonial artists studying abroad.

Ramsay follows a restrained academic-tonal approach, placing the figure against a neutral ground and relying on subtle gradations of grey and flesh tone rather than bright colour. The handling of the face is precise and searching, while drapery is rendered more freely.