Portrait of a Lady Holding an Orange Blossom, research podcast from the Art Gallery of Ontario

Unknown, European. Portrait of a Lady Holding an Orange Blossom, mid-18th century. Oil on canvas. Overall: 80 × 56.2 cm. Purchase, with funds from the European Curatorial Committee, 2020. 2019/2437

In January this year, the AGO acquired an exciting new painting.

Made from oil on canvas in the second half of the 1700s, the portrait shows a young woman of colour standing outdoors presenting an orange blossom in her right hand. This new acquisition is an exceptionally rare portrait of an individual woman of colour with all signs pointing to the wealth and status of the sitter. While the sitter’s depiction in opulent dress and the mere existence of the portrait suggest that she may have been a free woman, she may have descended from both colonizers and enslaved people. AGO’s ongoing research aims to better understand the woman in the painting and the life she lived.

In AGO’s podcast series, the curators speak with experts in different fields to discover more about where and when the painting was made, who the subject might be, and who painted the portrait. Read more and listen here (also on podcast apps under ‘Art Gallery of Ontario’).