John Closterman trained with his father in Osnabrück, but in 1781, he journeyed to England and worked for the portrait painter John Riley. The many portraits of Restoration female sitters (many of which remain unknown, as is the case here) offer the best testimony to the new social, political and sexual power of women in England in the second half of the seventeenth century. The sitter’s face and upper body are powerfully lit by an unidentified source of light, revealing her soft skin tone. A lock of her hair winds around her right shoulder further accentuating her pale bosom.