Watercolour portrait of a lady seated in an armchair, by F. Cruickshank. Great Britain, 1830.

Cruickshank's anonymous subject has the individuality of a portrait. She is seated in a comfortable well-appointed drawing room. The room is furnished with a square piano and a guitar, and beneath the piano, a Canterbury, a rack designed to hold music. On the mantelpiece there is an ice pail doing duty as a vase for cut flowers. The woman has a distant melancholy air. Indeed the picture as a whole is ambiguous and heavy with mystery. There is a pair of gloves on the floor in the foreground; this odd detail may in fact provide the clue to the mystery. Perhaps we are meant to see the woman as an abandoned mistress, cast off like an old glove, as the saying has it. The sitter has not been identified but the bust on the pedestal behind her strongly resembles Sir Francis Chantrey's bust of James Watt (1736-1819), the engineer and inventor of the improved steam engine. Three versions of the bust were made, one for a Colonel Campbell. Cruickshank exhibited a portrait of a Captain Campbell in 1829, so it is possible that this watercolour is a portrait of a member of Campbell's family.

Cruickshank's anonymous subject is seated in a comfortable well-appointed drawing room. The room is furnished with a square piano and a guitar, and beneath the piano, a Canterbury--a rack designed to hold music. On the mantlepiece there is an ice pail doing duty as a vase for cut flowers. The woman has a distant melancholy air. Indeed the picture as a whole is ambiguous and puzzling. There is a pair of gloves on the floor in the foreground; this odd detail may in fact provide the clue to the mystery. Perhaps we are meant to see the woman as an abandoned wife or mistress, cast off like an old glove, as the saying has it. The sitter has not been identified but the bust on the pedestal behind her strongly resembles Sir Francis Chantrey's bust of James Watt (1736-1819), the engineer and inventor of the improved steam engine. Three versions of the bust were made, two for the Watt family, and one for a Colonel Campbell. Cruickshank exhibited a portrait of a Captain Campbell in 1829, so it is possible that this watercolour is a portrait of a member of Campbell's family.

P.1-1946