Young woman wearing feather in her hair

Frye, Thomas · 1760

Mezzotint portrait on paper of a young girl with a feather in her plaited or braided hair, holding a string of pearls with her right hand, from the first 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'. Perhaps a portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Berkeley (1719/20-1792). 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.