This portrait miniature of a woman yet to be identified was painted by Penelope Carwardine (1730-1804), a female miniaturist in eighteenth-century England. Carwardine likely learned to paint from her mother, Anne Bullock. She turned to miniature painting as a source of income to support her family financially. Carwardine was close friends with Joshua Reynolds and his sister Frances, and she exhibited at the Incorporated Society of Artists in 1771 and 1772 (earlier entries may refer to either her sister-in-law or her mother, who also painted miniatures). This miniature is typical of Carwardine’s distinctive painting style, which often featured pale, blue-toned sitters with elongated faces turned on a slight angle. It is signed ‘PC’.