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This delicate study was attributed to Prince Hoare the Younger by its former owner, Leonard G. Duke, the distinguished collector of British drawings. The son of the portrait painter and pastellist William Hoare (1702-92), and nephew of his namesake, the sculptor Prince Hoare the Elder (c. 1711-69), the younger Prince Hoare is best known for the neoclassical figure drawings he produced during his association with the Fuseli circle in the 1770s. Hoare showed an aptitude for drawing from an early age and entered the royal Academy Schools in 1773. He traveled to Italy in 1776, visiting first Florence and the settling in Rome, where he was to spend the next three years. On his return to England in 1780, Hoare exhibited portraits and history paintings at the royal Academy, be he abandoned painting in 1785, avowedly for reasons of "delicacy of health." Hoare confided in his friend Joseph Farington that "he aquitted the profession because he could not succeed in that practice as he wished," but his surviving works nonetheless indicate the Hoare was an accomplished draftsman and portrait painter. The subject has never been identified, nor has the drawing been securely dated. The cap worn by the young woman indicates a date of the late 1770s, and Hoare may have made the drawing in Italy. During his stay in Rome, Hoare fell in love with the talented and attractive painter Maria Hadfiled, who later married Richard Cosway (see cats. 19-20 and 40). The features of the sitter resemble Maria's, and it is tempting to speculate that this study commemorates this romantic episode.

Gillian Forrester

Wilcox, Forrester, O'Neil, Sloan. The Line of Beauty: British Drawings and Watercolors of the Eighteenth Century. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 2001. pg. 19 cat. no. 4