Portrait of Catherine Grey, Lady Manners

Catherine Grey, daughter of the Duke of Rutland, is shown in the full elegance of late Georgian portraiture. Lawrence, the successor to Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds as the leading British portrait painter, brought a brisk, confident handling of paint and a flair for dramatic pose that made him the preferred painter of the Regency aristocracy. This portrait, executed when Lawrence was at the height of his powers, captures both the sitter’s social standing and a sense of lively intelligence beneath the formal conventions of the genre.