What is thought to be the full name of the person in the picture whose modesty is barely preserved by a red drape?
In his field and day, Wright was certainly eclipsed by his rival the more prolific Lely, to whom he is often compared. One critic, Millar, observes that any comparisons undertaken would "ruthlessly expose Wright's weaknesses and mannerisms" but that positively "they would also demonstrate his remarkable independence, his unfailing integrity and charm, the sources of which must partly lie in his unusual origins, fragmented career and attractive personality". Millar suggests that a particularly useful comparison can be made between Lely and Wright's respective portrayals of the Duchess of Clevland (Barbara Villiers) (above). Whereas Lely portrayed her as a "full-blown and palpably desirable strumpet", the more seriously minded Wright, who was not really in sympathy with the morality of the new court and its courtesans, rendered a more puppet-like figure.However, even if Lely was considered the more masterly and fashionable of the two in seventeenth-century Britain, Wright is generally accepted as portraying the more lively and realistic likenesses of his subjects, a fact that reinforces Pepys's observation that Lely's work was "good but not like". Neither should Wright's realism be confused with a prudishness; as can be seen, for example, in his portrait the lady, thought to be Ann Davis (right). The picture, with the sitter's clothing left undone and her modesty barely preserved by a red drape, has been described as exhibiting a fresh – even risky – reality: erotic by contemporary standards. Whereas Wright's contemporaries might have used the ‘disguise’ of presenting the sitter in the guise of a classical goddess to protect against accusation of  salaciousness, Wright's portrait rather depends on his realism, notably in his flesh tones, and depth.
Ann Davis