Portrait study of a seated woman holding a child,

ca. 1775

During his brilliant career as a society portrait painter, Romney produced numerous preliminary sketches, characterized by free and robust draftsmanship. These examples might be related to two maternal portraits that reflect the impact of Romney’s stay in Italy, particularly in their evocation of the Renaissance painter Raphael’s classical Madonna and Child compositions. Additionally, the tender and informal relationship between mother and child—conveyed by sweeping washes and bold, minimalist contours—signifies the artist’s response to a cultural shift in ideas about child-rearing in the late eighteenth century, when a new style of "natural" parenting was promoted, to a large extent by the popular theories of the Swiss philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.