Around 1786, a young Spanish noblewoman had herself painted as a shepherdess, in a gown covered in roses and a hat that may have come from England. She was not herding any sheep. This was the height of fashion.
What you're looking at
Francisco de Goya painted María Ana de Pontejos y Sandoval, the Marquesa de Pontejos, standing in a parklike setting. She has a wasp-thin waist, and she wears a wide-brimmed hat over carefully arranged hair. Roses are pinned around the bodice and tucked into the folds of her overskirt, and she holds a carnation. Near her feet is a small pug wearing a collar hung with bells.
A Spanish lady in a French costume
Her outfit copies the “shepherdess” style of Marie Antoinette, which was hugely popular in France before the Revolution. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, which owns the painting, says the parklike setting and the roses reflect that era's sentimental love of nature, influenced by the writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The hat may have been inspired by English fashion, since similar hats appear in portraits by Gainsborough. Scholars at the Metropolitan Museum note that by the end of the 1780s and the 1790s, Spain's aristocrats were dropping this French style for the dress of the majo and maja, figures from the lower classes. So this portrait catches a fashion just before it changed.
Who she was
The marquesa lived from 1762 to 1834. Goya probably painted this portrait for her first marriage, to Francisco Moñino, the brother of the powerful Count of Floridablanca, who was also one of Goya's patrons. She married more than once, and the portrait later passed to her third husband. It stayed in her family until 1931, when it was sold to the American financier Andrew W. Mellon. He gave it to the National Gallery of Art in 1937.
What to look for
The NGA notes that the trees, grass and shrubbery are simplified almost to abstraction, so nothing competes with her small, fragile figure. The pale, silvery tones recall Velázquez, the earlier Spanish master whom Goya had studied.