Lot 272: Jean-Laurent Mosnier (Paris 1743/4-1808 St. Petersburg)

Portrait of the Honorable Mrs. Pelham, bust-length, in a white dress and wearing cameo earings, a necklace and brooch
oil on unlined canvas
24 x 19 3/4 in. (61 x 50.2 cm.)

Royal Academy, London, 1793, no. 182.

Jean-Laurent Mosnier was a French portraitist and miniaturist, originally a member of the Académie Royale in Paris, who fled to London in 1790 at the outbreak of the French Revolution. His English portraits, which combine the highly polished surface detail of his early training with an awareness of contemporary English taste, were exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1791 and 1796, and it is to this period that the present portrait almost certainly belongs.