A Fashionable Lady of Cheltenham

This watercolour profile shows a fashionably dressed lady with ever so dainty feet seated and looking relaxed in a dark blue dress with distinctive sleeves that are flounced above the elbow and full down to the wrist. This is worn with a white pelerine fastened with a gold brooch and a pretty cap lightly trimmed with green and tied under the chin. Over her arms and falling over the back of the chair is a long grey fur boa.

The portrait is signed bottom right in pencil ‘Richd Dighton / Cheltenham’. It resides in a bird’s eye maple frame with a gilt slip.

The Dighton family produced several artists over three generations. Like his father Robert, Richard Dighton (1796-1880) specialised in full-length watercolour profiles of city personalities, actors, politicians, bankers and aristocrats. The sitters of his portraits were predominantly men and provide an excellent record of the changing fashions of the time. He initially lived and worked in London but in 1828, by then a married man with a growing family, Richard Dighton moved to Cheltenham where he was guaranteed a good clientele from visitors to this popular spa town. The Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum hold a good collection of his watercolour portraits.