High Fashion

During the 1760s and ’70s, fashionable ladies favoured tall hairstyles known as ‘poufs’. False hair was used to supplement a lady’s natural hair as it was stretched over wool or horsehair pads to achieve height and bulk. These styles were so labour intensive they needed to last for weeks and so required the use of pomatum, a scented paste, to mask the nauseating whiff of greasy wool. The hair was then often decorated with feathers and ribbons or, as here, covered with a dainty doll-sized hat or drape.

Also catching the viewer’s eye is this lady’s pink rose corsage pinned to her coral dress with a white ribbon bow and her black ribbon necklace tied at the back as was the custom during the 1760s.

The portrait is set in a gold bracelet style frame with an attractive seed pearl surround. Both bracelet clasps are present; a fine gold chain and ring have been added. The reverse of the frame is engraved – ‘MEH.1826. / R.H.’ – most likely as a later gift inscription.

Thomas Redmond (c.1745-1785) was apprenticed as a house painter before studying at St Martin’s Lane Academy. Around 1769 he opened a studio in Bath where he would have been assured of a steady clientele amongst the well-to-do visitors who flocked to the popular spa town. It was there too that he met and married Jane Lawrence, the daughter of a lace merchant, in October 1770. Together they had four children before Jane died of consumption in 1781. Thomas’s untimely death followed just four years later in July 1785. His obituary notice (Bath Chronicle 14 July 1785) described him as “a man much esteemed in private life, and highly distinguished as an artist”.
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