Lady Fashionably Dressed (no title)

Date1761

Artist/Maker Thomas Frye (ca. 1710 - 1762)

MediumMezzotint engraving on laid paper

DimensionsOverall: 14 1/16 × 20 3/16in. (35.7 × 51.2cm) Other (Plate): 13 7/8 × 19 7/8in. (35.2 × 50.5cm)

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1982-163

DescriptionLower right corner reads: "T. Frye,. 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 which was described as "Ladies, very elegantly attired in the fashion, and in the most agreeable attitudes." While most sitters in Frye's mezzotints are unidentified, there is some debate as to whether this fashionably dressed woman is Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry. Perhaps, portraits from this series have remained anonymous because the ladies that Frye drew while attending the theater declined to have their names affixed to the engravings, as they did not know in what company the portraits might appear.

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.