Watermark: none visible through lining.
The Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman painted both portraits and history paintings and was an important figure in the development of Neoclassicism. She was primarily active in Italy, but after attracting the attention of British travelers, she was lured to London and spent nearly 20 years there, where she was among the founding members of the Royal Academy. Internationally famous, she had patrons from Philadelphia to Warsaw. This portrait is one of a pair of drawings, of Dorothea Hellen (d. 1806) and her husband, George Robert Hellen (1725-1793), an Irish politician and judge; Kauffman also painted oil portraits of the couple during her trip to Ireland in 1771 (now in the National Gallery of Ireland). A second portrait of the same sitter, signed with the monogram and dated ca. 1765, is in the Stanford University Art Museum (Inv. no. 81.301).
Signed with monogram under oval, in pen and brown ink, "AK"(linked). Inscribed on verso (barely visible through lining), in pen and ink, "Pourtrait of Mrs. Hellen, wife of / Judge Hellen, by Angelica Kaufmann / herself. / Thomas Beard / ...April 6th / 1894".
Wildenstein, Daniel Leopold, donor.
Reilley, Ewing W., Mrs., donor.
Ryskamp, Charles, ed. Twentieth Report to the Fellows of the Pierpont Morgan Library, 1981-1983. New York : Pierpont Morgan Library, 1984, p. 267.