Portrait of a young woman seated

After moving to Bath, Gainsborough made this drawing in preparation for an oil portrait of Ann Ford, an amateur singer and musician who was taking the town by storm. The artist intended the painting to establish his national reputation. He used soft black chalk to establish the pose and to explore elements of dress. Hands and facial features are indicated lightly, since he intended to work those up directly on the canvas. More detailed is the silk gown adorned with lace cuffs, bows on the bodice and sleeves, and a skirt decorated with rosettes. Trained in the French manner in London, Gainsborough had mastered the expressive potential of chalk at an early age and, in this mature sheet, used it to explore the abstract possibilities of the fashionably dressed female form. A prolific landscape draftsman, he rarely drew large figure studies.