Lady Borlase

Gerard Soest

National Gallery of Art

This painting depicts a woman facing the right, either standing or seated. She has fair skin, pink cheeks, pale eyebrows, blue eyes, and pink lips in a neutral expression. Her hair is curly and voluminous, styled back in two bunches with ringlets falling over her shoulders. It is gray towards the roots, but the ends appear to be brown. She is wearing a luxurious, gold-colored satin gown with draped white sleeves and a white undershirt peeking out at the neckline. The skirts bunch around her, obscuring her lower body. A single strand of pearls adorns her neck, and we see one dangling pearl earring. In one hand, she holds a blue fabric by her side. In the other, she is holding a small dish shaped like an oyster shell that catches a small stream of water that comes from the top right of the painting, seeming to emerge from a dark rocky shape on the right side. On the right, the background includes dark green foliage under a cloudy blue-and-gray sky.