Mrs. Davies Davenport by Romney, George

This is George Romney's portrait of Charlotte Sneyd, painted around 1782 to 1784. It hangs today in a private collection, but in its own time it was at the center of a quiet scandal that followed a sixteen-year-old girl into adulthood.

The painting itself is a study in 1780s fashionable informality, the wide straw hat, the pink silk bodice, and a small lapdog nestled almost invisibly in her hands. The lace at her neckline is remarkable: Romney suggests it with a few quick strokes rather than painting each thread, an economy of means that feels strikingly modern. Most viewers miss the dog entirely on first look.

Charlotte Sneyd married Davies Davenport, a wealthy landowner, but this portrait was not commissioned by him. When it was exhibited or shown among their social circle, Davenport's friends recognized the face and understood the implication: a young woman had sat for a portrait, and a very flattering, intimate one, for someone else. The dog in her lap, an 18th-century symbol of fidelity, took on a cruel irony in the gossip that followed. Her reputation suffered for it, and the painting became a piece of evidence in drawing-room courts.

Romney was one of the most sought-after portraitists of his day, rivaling Reynolds and Gainsborough. But his legacy is tangled with the lives of the women he painted, their likenesses survived while their standing sometimes did not. Look at her eyes: she holds the room with a composure that outlasted the scandal.