Miss Kitty Dressing
1781
Medium
Mezzotint, with traces of engraving, in dark brown on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 40.9 × 32.9 cm (16 1/8 × 13 in.); Plate: 45.3 × 33 cm (17 7/8 × 13 in.); Sheet: 58.7 × 46 cm (23 1/8 × 18 1/8 in.)
Classification
mezzotint
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
158689
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Thomas Watson was one of the most gifted mezzotint engravers of his generation. In this intimate and slightly humorous example after a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, he achieved a convincing sense of interior candlelight illumination through his soft touch. The portraits in this image appear to depict the same girls found in Wright’s similarly lit composition An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, an oil painting now in the National Gallery in London.