The identity of the sitter is uncertain, but the Duchess of Argyll’s name appears in the lists of the ladies included in Anne Mees’ ‘Gallery of Beauties’ and this portrait is similar to other known images of the Duchess. Caroline (1774-1835) was the daughter of George Bussy Villiers, 4th Earl of Jersey, and married Henry Lord Paget, in 1795. The marriage was dissolved in 1810 and in November 1810 she married George Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll.

This miniature is one of the series of paintings in the ‘Gallery of Beauties’ commissioned by George IV when prince regent. These were portraits of fashionable ladies, one list of whom is in the royal archives and another printed in the Ladies Monthly Museum XVI (January 1814). A contemporary account records that the prince was ‘forming a superb boudoir for their reception’. Opulent frames for the paintings were ordered from Rundell, Bridge and Rundell in 1814. The series may have been conceived as a nineteenth-century version of the ‘Windsor Beauties’ painted by Sir Peter Lely for Anne Hyde, duchess of York in 1662-5, and Sir Godfey Kneller’s ‘Hampton Court Beauties’ painted for Queen Mary around 1691.

Anne Mee (1780/5-1851) was the daughter of the artist John Foldsone. She was educated in London and was a protégée and pupil of the portrait painter George Romney. Lady Courtown introduced her to Queen Charlotte, and Charlotte Papendiek, journalist and assistant keeper of the wardrobe to Queen Charlotte, described Anne Mee drawing the queen and princesses at Windsor in 1790. Mee visited frequently after that date.