Miss Eleanor Urquhart

Sir Henry Raeburn

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the hips up, a pale-skinned woman wearing white sits facing us against a golden-toned landscape background in this vertical portrait painting. The woman’s body is angled to our left, but she looks at us steadily from the corners of her large eyes. The slate-blue irises have some touches of hazel. Her cheeks are tinged with pink, she has a long nose, and her full pink lips are closed. Her ash-brown hair is pulled loosely back and falls in curls around her heart-shaped face. A translucent white ruffle flares around the neckline of her opal-white, long-sleeved dress. The bodice wraps across the front to a bow at her lower back. The landscape immediately behind her is loosely painted with gold and mustard yellow. Mountains in the deep distance along the horizon are painted broadly with smoky blue and purple. A band of plum-purple clouds stretches across the top of the painting in front of higher, pale yellow and blue clouds.