This portrait is of the famous tragic actress Mrs Yates in the role of Electra from Voltaire's play Orestes. But although it is a portrait of an actress in a given role, it also emulates the grand society portraits of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founding President of the Royal Academy in London. Reynolds had pragmatically incorporated his enthusiasm for the Old Masters and classical antiquity into his portraits. Dressing a sitter as a mythological character was common practice on the European Continent, but Reynolds imbued this play-acting with a greater sense of drama, often posing his figures in quotations of poses from classical statues or the Old Masters. When Cotes exhibited this miniature in 1769 he knew it would be seen in the same room as Reynolds's oil paintings. Spurred on by a sense of competition, he clearly hoped to demonstrate in this large work his ability for invention and his virtuosity. Until this time Cotes had always painted exquisite miniatures no bigger than one inch (2.5 cm) high, showing only the head and shoulders of a sitter. This extensive area of ivory has clearly presented Cotes with problems in terms of large areas of surface on which the paint seems dull, and in terms of composition, which seems somewhat stilted.