This portrait was done at the time of the sitter's marriage to Thomas Watkinson Payler in 1771. The following year, her twenty-four-year-old husband's portrait was completed by Reynolds as a companion piece. For the two pictures the artist was paid seventy guineas, a considerable sum for the time. Reynolds, having been appointed the first president of the Royal Academy in 1768, enjoyed a reputation as the foremost portraitist of his age.

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