DISCOVERART

Thomas Watson

Miss Kitty Dressing

1781
Mezzotint, with traces of engraving, in dark brown on ivory laid paper
40.9 × 32.9 cm (16.1 × 13 in)

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In the collection of Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago · as of July 2026

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

Thomas Watson was one of the most gifted mezzotint engravers of his generation. In this intimate and slightly humorous example after a painting by Joseph Wright of Derby, he achieved a convincing sense of interior candlelight illumination through his soft touch. The portraits in this image appear to depict the same girls found in Wright’s similarly lit composition An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump , an oil painting now in the National Gallery in London.

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