Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan

Thomas Gainsborough painted this portrait of Elizabeth Linley Sheridan in 1787. She was a celebrated singer who had eloped with the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan years earlier, and remained one of the great beauties of Georgian England.

Gainsborough shows her outdoors, her hair and dress blowing in the wind, posed against a stormy sky. The loose brushwork in the foliage and sky contrasts with the careful rendering of her face and the shimmering fabric of her dress.

This is one of Gainsborough's most romantic portraits and among the finest 18th-century British paintings at the National Gallery of Art.