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The essayist, poet, and medical activist Lady Mary Wortley Montagu appears here in an outfit she called her "Turkish habit," which includes a headdress and an ermine shawl. This is one of several portraits of Montagu by the Anglo-German artist Godfrey Kneller in which she is similarly dressed. Her appearance inspired the vogue for Ottoman-influenced clothing, known as Turquerie, within British aristocratic circles. Between 1716 and 1718, Montagu lived in Constantinople, now Istanbul, where her husband served as ambassador to the Ottoman Empire. She observed how local women inoculated children against smallpox, a devastating viral disease that she had earlier survived but to which her brother had succumbed. Montagu had this treatment administered to her own children and, although it was initially controversial, convinced others in Britain to do the same. Through her pioneering advocacy, inoculation eventually became commonplace in eighteenth-century Britain.

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2022

The identity of the sitter is uncertain, though the costume-an ermine robe (indicating nobility) and a plumed Oriental headdress-together with the history of the painting's ownership, suggest a real link to the writer and traveler Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (ca. 1689-1762). The painting originally hung at Old St. Albans Court, near Canterbury in Kent, the country seat of the Hammond family. The "silver-tongued" poet Anthony Hammond (1668-1738) edited in 1720 a miscellany of poems by Alexander Pope and others in their circle, including Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Later, Lady Mary was in touch with Hammond's son James (1710-1742), another poet and wit, who became known as "the joy and dread of Bath."

Gallery label for installation of YCBA collection, 2005