Portrait of Mrs. Richard Thompson

Portrait of Mrs. Richard Thompson from 1780 by George Romney is a society portrait from the peak of his London career. Romney's female portraits were admired for their combination of elegant simplicity and natural grace. Romney's oil handling was distinguished by fluid, rapidly applied strokes and an instinctive sense of elegant silhouette, producing portraits of apparent effortlessness that concealed careful preparatory drawing. Romney's obsession with Emma Hamilton—whom he painted over sixty times as Ariadne, Medea, Calypso, and dozens of other mythological figures—reveals the Romantic imagination beneath his fashionable surface, his sitter becoming a vehicle for his artistic fantasies.

The sitter is presented with characteristic Romney elegance, the flowing composition and warm palette creating an image of natural, unforcced grace.