Mrs. John Wendt

In the mid-eighteenth century, Thomas Hudson helped set the standard for fashionable portraiture in London with works such as this one. The sitter is posed elegantly, holding a basket of flowers and wearing a voluminous silk dress adorned with lace, bows, and pearl details. This style of dress was very common in portraits of this era; depending on the sitter, it may have been a stock dress kept in the artist’s studio and used repeatedly to convey gentility and wealth. Deep blue was among the most popular colors for men’s and women’s fancy dress in the eighteenth century; here it may be an attribute of Mrs. Wendt’s fidelity, along with the collared dog gazing up at her.