Portrait of Two Young Ladies by the Dundee-born portraitist Katherine Read (1723-1778), who, throughout the eighteenth century, garnered acclaim in continental Europe and England with her portraits of affluent sitters, is an expertly drafted double portrait that evinces Read's skill in composition and use of pastel, her preffered medium. Two young women, set against a simple grey background, are shown embracing one another, both slightly averting their gaze. One holds a music sheet in her hand, evincing the girls' artistic leanings. The elegant dress, jewellery and headbands further underline the sitters' social standing. The colours chosen, mellow hues of greys, whites and blues, are characteristic of Read's style and that of late-eigteenth-century artists' classicising tendencies more generally. Of her oeuvre, a contemporary critic once remarked: "Miss Read has the happiest ideas, assisted by a most beautiful Stile of Colouring, perfect Design, and exact Judgement". 

Katherine Read, 1723-1778

Katherine Read was born in Logie, near Dundee, on February 3, 1723. Read was the first Scottish woman to receive formal art training and became one of the most popular portraitists of the 18th century, painting royalty and gaining fame throughout Europe. She worked in a variety of media, including oil and crayon, and also created miniatures. 

Born into an aristocratic family, her mother was the sister of Sir John Wedderburn, 5th Baronet of Blackness and a Jacobite rebel. Read and her family fled Scotland for Paris in 1746 to join the exiled Jacobite community. She then trained in Paris and became a pupil of French Rococo portraitist Maurice Quentin de La Tour. Read moved to Rome in 1751, following the other Scottish Jacobite refugees. Under the patronage of Roman Catholic priest Peter Grant, a Scottish Catholic Mission agent in Rome, she was introduced to an elite network of members of the church, where she established a portraiture clientele from the Italian aristocracy and the transient British expatriate community in Rome on the grand tour. Read returned to Britain in 1753 and established her studio in London, where she formed a reputation as one of the most fashionable crayon portrait painters, which she maintained for over twenty years.

After her career in the UK began to decline in her 50s, she travelled to India in the hopes of establishing a practise for herself, but she was unsuccessful. She died en route back to London and was buried at sea. Her death was recorded on December 15, 1778.