Lady Frances (Finch) Courtenay

This portrait of Lady Frances Courtenay is modeled on Peter Paul Rubens’s portrait of his wife Helena Fourment (ca. 1630–1632), which became one of the most admired portraits in mid-18th-century Britain. Rubens’s image of Helena inspired other artists’ portraits of married women in the “Rubens’s Wife” mode, such as this painting, and also became a reference for costumes at masked balls. While Hudson refers to Rubens’s portrait in the sitter’s dress, pose, setting, and accessories, he relaxed and lowered the position of the sitter’s arms, and included aspects of contemporary fashion. For example, Courtenay’s hair is pulled straight back from her forehead, a hairstyle popular during the 1740s.