Anon. Portrait of a Bacchante

An original early 19th-century watercolour painting Portrait of a Bacchante.

An exceptionally fine miniature portrait in watercolour with gum arabic and touches of bodycolour.

Painted in a Neoclassical style, the portrait shows a beautiful young lady dressed as a Maenad (Greek) or Bacchante (Roman) figure, a female follower of Dionysus. Her softly curled hair is adorned with vine leaves and her diaphanous robe falls sensuously to reveal alabaster skin.

The female Bacchante figure recurs in neoclassical portraiture of the 18th and early 19th century, with famous examples by Sir Joshua Reynolds, Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, George Romney, Angelica Kauffman and Jean-Baptiste Greuze.

The Bacchante character was a fashionable guise in which to dress a sitter, as is the case in the present portrait, where the focus is on the individual rather than any mythological narrative. Lady Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton, British ambassador to the Kingdom of Naples, was painted repeatedly in this guise, including by Romney, Reynolds and Le Brun.

The present portrait derives from a Victorian album of exceptional quality, previously uncatalogued. Based on other material in the album, the painting is possibly Continental, bearing similarity to the work of French Neoclassical artists such as Jacques-Jean-Baptiste Augustin (1759–1832) and Jacques Antoine Vallin (1760–after 1831).

Please note the small size of this artwork.