Margaret Desenfans (neé Morris) by Sir Joshua Reynolds

This portrait depicts Margaret Morris (1731-1814) as a young woman, before her marriage. To have her portrait painted by leading artist, Joshua Reynolds (1723-92), shows that she was mixing in fashionable artistic circles. When Morris married Noel Desenfans (1741-1807), nineteen years after this portrait was made, she brought with her the money that kickstarted her husband's art dealing business. Margaret’s wealth was tied to the flourishing industry around her hometown of Swansea in south Wales. Her father and brother had made their money in the Welsh copper-manufacturing business, and they produced and sold goods to merchants, including those trading in Africa, the West and East Indies, and to the East India Company. Morris was the only one of Dulwich Picture Gallery's founders to live to see the Gallery built. After the death of her husband, and later her good friend Francis Bourgeois (1753-1811), she provided the money that allowed architect John Soane (1753-1837) to complete his grand design.

Reynolds painted Morris’s portrait in the late 1750s, when he was settled in London, fresh from his ‘Grand Tour’ of Italy. He also painted Margaret's sisters: Bridget (1729-68), Mary (1735-1812), and Jane (1739-1810). Reynolds went on to become the first president of the Royal Academy of Arts in London, was the author of the influential series of lectures on art entitled the Discourses on Art, and accepted the position of principal painter to King George III (1738-1820).