Fashionable woman holding a closed fan

Frye, Thomas

Mezzotint portrait on paper of a fashionable woman holding a closed fan from the second of two series of life-sized heads designed, engraved and published by Thomas Frye (1710-1762) in London between 1760 and 1762. The first series was advertised as, 'Twelve heads drawn from nature and as large of life', and the second, 'Six ladies in picturesque attitudes' or, 'Ladies, very elegantly attired in the fashions, and in the most agreeable attitudes'. A note written in pencil suggests the sitter may be one of Frye's two daughters. Frye moved from Ireland to London when he was in his twenties. He made a career as a portraitist in oils and pastel, miniature painter and founder of the Bow porcelain factory with Edward Heyleyn. But it is for these life-sized mezzotint prints, produced in the final years of his life, that he is primarily remembered.