Summary
The unknown lady in Devis's portrait is seated in parkland on a circular bench constructed around the base of a tree, affording the occupant a shady retreat from the summer sun. By her side is a guitar, and in her hands the sheet music that she is to play. The instrument on the bench is an English guitar, 'a solo instrument used almost exclusively in the home and played virtually always by women' (quoted in M. Rosenthal, The Art of Thomas Gainsborough, New Haven and London, 1999, p.167). Any performance she might have given would have taken place in private, according to contemporary rules of etiquette. Here, she sits alone in the garden, perhaps to rehearse, as well as to study.
The woman wears a fashionable sacque dress, or robe à la française, a fashion, as the name suggests, imported from France. The woman's dress is of blue silk, the bodice trimmed with lines of ruched ribbon with cross-over silk lace trimming, the elbows decorously covered with matching silk lace ruffles… (read more)
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