Jane Browne

John Singleton Copley

National Gallery of Art

Shown from the waist up, a pale-skinned woman wearing a satin or silk shell-pink gown and a greenish-yellow cloak looks at us, slightly smiling, through an oval opening in this vertical portrait painting. Her shoulders angle slightly to our left, and her oval-shaped face turns slightly to the right. She cuts her dark gray eyes cut to the side to look at us from under arched brows. Her nose drops a little at the end, and her thin, pink lips are closed. Her dark brown hair is pulled up and woven with dark pearls reaching back from the temples. Curls fall down her back, and one rests over her left shoulder, to our right. The tightly fitting bodice has low curved neckline lined with lace. Short sleeves embellished with pewter-gray buttons or bosses overlap longer white sleeves. The bodice is open down the front to show the white undergarment and is tied with two pale yellow bows, one over the other. The cloak falls heavily in deep folds from her shoulders and is held in place with a strip of fabric lined at intervals with pairs of dark silver beads. The ribbon is affixed to the cloak with a red brooch at the woman’s right shoulder, to our left, and it stretches down and across her body. She stands in front of a dark blue, cloudy sky. The painted frame through which she looks is camel brown. The artist signed the front-facing, beveled edge of the oval frame: “I.S. Copley. Pinx. 1756.”