Profile portrait of a woman (no title)

Date1760

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

MediumBlack and white mezzotint engraving

DimensionsOH: 20 15/16" x OW: 15 3/8"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number1983-278

DescriptionLower margin reads: "Tho.s Frye Pictor, Inv.t & Sculp.t/ Hatton Garden 1760"
Label TextBetween 1760 and 1762, Anglo-Irish artist Thomas Frye published two series of life-size portraits. He advertised plans for the first set of twelve engravings in the London Chronicle, June 3-5, 1760, as “drawn from Nature and large as Life from Designs in the manner of Piazzeta of Rome.” Frye may have based on engravings on portrait studies drawn from largely unknown models. Or it is possible that acquaintances and family members may have sat for the renderings. 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.