Portrait of a lady wearing an ivory silk gown seated in a landscape, resting her arm on a stone pillar and holding a sprig of  blossom. Circa 1715.

Verelst’s hand is particularly evident in the treatment of the sitter's gown with its luminous, bright highlights, a technique influenced by her uncle, the celebrated flower painter Simon Verelst. The careful attention to detail and the balanced, harmonious composition reflect the high level of technical training she received within her family’s illustrious Dutch artistic dynasty.

For centuries, much of her oeuvre was misattributed, often to male family members or a mysterious "Maria." Recent research has finally restored these works to their true author, revealing Adriana Verelst to be a polymath, a linguist, and a formidable professional artist who successfully navigated the gender-restricted art world of the early Georgian era.

Adriana Verelst (c.1683-1769) was born in Vienna and was the daughter of Cecilia Fend and the artist Herman Verelst (1641-1690), a member of the Verelst family of artists. The family moved to London when she was aged three following the Turkish siege of Vienna and later she became a pupil of her father. She started painting portraits professionally at age fourteen painting William Wentworth, 2^nd Earl of Strafford (1626-1695).

Portraits by her at Audley End House of Charlotte Butler and Lady Isabella Scott are both remarkably closely aligned to this portrait in style and composition. Other known works include several portraits for Welbeck Abbey, as well as thirteen portraits for James Brydges, 1^st Duke of Chandos (1673-1744) which were likely intended for Cannons House, completed in 1724 and his London home in St James’s Square.

Adriana went on to work alongside other well-known artists including Charles Jervas, William Aikman and John Thornhill. Her portraits were in the similar fashionable 18th style as Godfrey Kneller and Michael Dahl and much of her work still remains misattributed to these and other male artists from the period. 

Adriana was well educated and spoke a number of different languages which no doubt helped her secure patronage. According to an anecdote published in 1730 Maria was once at Drury Lane theatre when she heard some gentlemen nearby praising her in German, she then turned to them and began conversing in the same language before the gentleman switched to Latin, Adriana proceeded in Latin and the gentlemen were so impressed that they commissioned their portraits, and through their connections Adriana supposedly built up her list of clientele.