Public collection via the Cleveland Museum of Art
AT-00011122The Right Honorable Lady Mary Radcliffe (1732-98), Wife of Francis Eyre, Esq.
About the Artwork
A founding member of the Royal Academy and one of the leading fashionable portrait painters of his generation, Francis Cotes was a pioneer of pastel painting in England. Here, in her marriage portrait, the young Lady Mary Radcliffe is regal in a Turkish-inspired, peacock blue mantle decorated with gold and trimmed with ermine. Pearls and feathers adorn her hair and a décolleté scarlet bodice reveals an expanse of porcelain skin.
Inscriptions
Inscribed, at lower left, in black chalk: Cotes pxt. / 1755
Provenance
?-1924: Colonel Herbert Hall Mulliner [1861-1924], Birmingham 1924: (sale, Christie's, London, July 18, 1924, no. 2) after 1924-by 1937: (P. & D. Colnaghi, London) 1937: (sale, Mensing & Fils, Amsterdam, April 27, 1937, no. 148) 1937: (A. Seligmann & Rey, Paris, sold to Edward B. Greene, Cleveland, OH) 1937-1946: Edward B. Greene, Cleveland, OH, given to the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH 1946-: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Exhibition history
Master Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 27-October 17, 2000). British Drawings from the Cleveland Museum of Art . The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (February 10-May 26, 2013).
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Francis Cotes (British, 1726–1770)
- Date
- 1755
- Medium
- pastel on laid paper lined with canvas
- Dimensions
- Image: 60.7 x 45.7 cm (23 7/8 x 18 in.)
- Type
- Drawing
- Classification
- Drawing
- Department
- Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of Edward B. Greene
- Accession no.
- 1946.463
More by Frances Cotes in museum collections
Open-access museum record · AT-00011122
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