Bust-Length Portrait Study of a Young Woman with a Striped Shawl

Joseph van Aken

ca. 1740–60 · Black and white chalk, brown ink and graphite on blue laid paper, squared in graphite · Drawings and Prints

After training in Antwerp, the young Van Aken went to London, where he specialized in painting draperies. The leading portraitists there, including Joseph Highmore, Thomas Hudson, and Allan Ramsay, often painted only a sitter's face, relying on Van Aken to finish the rest of the figure. His work became ubiquitous, to the point that the collector and writer Horace Walpole remarked wryly: "As in England almost everybody's picture is painted, so almost every painter's works were painted by Van Aken." An assistant probably made this portrait study, but it demonstrates Van Aken's typical attention to texture using black and white chalk to describe the elements of the costume, with touches of brown ink used to refine details. The design was then overlaid with a graphite grid to allow it to be transferred accurately onto canvas.

Artist

Joseph van Aken

Date

ca. 1740–60

Medium

Black and white chalk, brown ink and graphite on blue laid paper, squared in graphite

Department

Drawings and Prints

Credit line

Purchase, Jeffrey L. Berenson Gift, 2004