Portrait of Miss Gardner, three-quarter-length, in a white dress with a blue sash and a hat, a bird on a string perched on her right hand, a bird cage to her side, in a landscape

Nathaniel Hone was one of the most talented Irish portrait painters of his generation. Like many of his fellow countrymen, he moved to London as a young man, where the local market offered greater possibilities; he only occasionally returned to Ireland afterwards. Hone initially specialized in painting portrait miniatures but gave this up in the 1760s to concentrate on work on the scale of life. He built up a fashionable portrait practice, and was one of two Irish founding members of the Royal Academy, the other being George Barret.