Artwork Information

This portrait of Susanna Maria Milward is a typical example of the bust-length portrait type in which John Russell, Britain’s foremost pastel artist, excelled, and for which he charged a standard fee of 30 guineas. Russell shows her wearing the dreamy orientalist muslins and turban of the Romantic style around 1800. To offset the gauzy softness he has completed the drawing with some energetic almost graffito (scratched) lines. Heaped with accolades at home and abroad, Russell held the titles of official ‘crayon painter' to the Prince of Wales in 1785, to George III from 1790, and to the Duke of York from 1792. Unlike his highborn and fashionable clientele, Russell was a fanatically religious Methodist and lived a reclusive life in fear of contamination by society’s vices.