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These are the aristocratic Montgomery sisters – Barbara, Elizabeth and Anne. Their father was the Irish aristocrat Sir William Montgomery and they were known as the 'Irish Graces'. They are shown gathering flowers to decorate a statue of Hymen, the Roman god of marriage. Reynolds posed them in what he described as ‘a variety of graceful historical attitudes’. These were taken from the work of admired old master painters, such as the seventeenth-century French artist Nicolas Poussin. Reynolds intended this to ennoble his figures, but it also laid him open to charges of plagiarism.

Tate Britain

London

Title

Three Ladies Adorning a Term of Hymen

Date

1773

Medium

Oil on canvas

Measurements

H 233.7 x W 290.8 cm

Accession number

N00079

Acquisition method

Bequeathed by the Earl of Blessington 1837

Work type

Painting

Tate Britain

Millbank, London, Greater London SW1P 4RG England

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Artist or maker

Joshua Reynolds

1723–1792

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