Lady Caroline Paget, Lady Capel (1773-1847) holding her daughter Harriet, later Mrs David Okenden Parry-Okenden (1793 -1819)

Hoppner's 1793 portrait of Lady Caroline Paget, Lady Capel, holding her infant daughter Harriet — painted just after her marriage — is a characteristic example of his mother-and-child commissions, a genre in which his sentimental warmth found its most appealing expression. Lady Caroline was the daughter of the 1st Earl of Uxbridge and moved in the highest military and aristocratic circles; her husband Arthur Capel would later play a role in the Peninsular War. Hoppner's ability to capture maternal tenderness with unsentimental technical precision made him the preferred portraitist for young aristocratic mothers in the 1790s.

The informal pose — mother bending toward infant — creates a diagonal energy that animates the composition without straining its naturalness. Hoppner's warm, translucent flesh tones give both mother and child an almost luminous delicacy. The drapery is handled with decorative ease, emphasizing femininity without pedantic fussiness.