Portrait of a fashionably dressed woman (no title)

Date1761

Designed and engraved by Thomas Frye (ca. 1710 - 1762)

MediumBlack and white mezzotint engraving

DimensionsOH: 20" x OW: 14 1/4" (includes false margins); Plate H: 19 1/2" x W: 13 3/4"

Credit LineGift of John A. Hyman and Betty C. Leviner.

Object number1992-143

DescriptionLower right corner: "Frye Inv.t: & Sculp.t/ Published Dec.ber 20: 1761"
Label TextBetween 1760 and 1762, Anglo-Irish artist Thomas Frye designed, engraved, and published two ambitious sets of life-sized mezzotint portraits entitled “Fancy Heads” featuring lavishly and exotically attired men and women in engaging poses. This print is from the second series. Many sitters in Frye's mezzotints are unidentified. He drew the majority of his female subjects while attending the theater, but did not have their permission to develop the renderings into formal portraits. The woman declined to have their names affixed to the engravings, as they did not know in the company their portraits might later appear. As a result, Frye based his work on both sketches form the theater and memory.

The artist does not identify the individuals in his “Fancy Heads” series. Inspiration for the portraits are thought to have been drawn from archetypes who Frye observed in the theaters, masquerades, and pleasure gardens of Georgian London. Frye frequented the theater specifically to sketch royalty and leading women of British society who attended. Frye hoped to break into the “Fancy” print market which featured generic portraits of unidentified fashionable ladies in various poses.

Frye marketed his prints, which were expensive and published in limited editions, quite extensively in the London press. Prints by Frye were advertised in the Virginia Gazette on September 17, 1771 (Purdie & Dixon) for sale in Williamsburg. The advertisement reads:
“To be Sold any Time betwixt this and October Court for ready Money, Sundry fine prints done by Mr. Fry[e] and some Election Pieces by Hogarth, the Property of a Genleman[sic] gone to England. They may be seen at any Time on applying to Benjamin Bucktrout.”

Thomas Frye was one of the most significant artists working in mezzotint engraving in the eighteenth-century. He was born outside Dublin around 1710, and moved to England at age twenty to work as a painter and engraver. He gained notoriety as the manager at the Bow Porcelain Factory, where he helped develop a recipe for bone china. After resigning his position at Bow, he returned to the medium of mezzotint. Frye’s mastery of this this engraving process is displayed through his ability to achieve dramatic variation in tone, characterized by velvety depths and luminous highlights, that render his subjects both sensitive and shockingly life-like.