Featured 18thC Portrait of Lady (Saint?) With a Tambourine

I have several hand screens myself, and none of them are this big, crude or bulky.
A lady like this would have a refined, delicate hand screen.

I still think it is a tambourine. With or without handle, I'm not sure. There are tambourines with handles, although mostly in Asia.

Deep and big.

 

This is another portrait with a tambourine that looks to be with handle:


https://www.alamy.com/childhood-por...main-fl-1769-1772-painter-image480428730.html

 

Well found! Not fully familiar with Georgian customs but... I wouldn't expect a lady to be wearing an outdoor hat in front of a domestic fire.

Debora

 

A very interesting discussion! The site has been almost impossible to use for the last while so I've held off on replying but I've read all your responses! Is there anything about her that points to a specific time period other than 18th or no? I know she's not the most well executed, the hands etc, but her face and particularly her eyes are lovely I think.

 

She's what in the UK would be considered from the Georgian era. Her hairdo is called a hedgehog and she's wearing a stomacher with buttons (aka a compere.)
Painted in the naive style which makes one think yours is a provincial work and the sitter wouldn't have been the first to adopt those fashions. She's very charming but... Interesting that at some point the frame was considered to have more value as it was removed and reused or sold.

Debora

 

I can't really tell for sure, but looks more like a strap to me. The way the (weirdly small) right hand is clasped around it makes me think it is holding something very slender. Although the title says it's a tambourine, it looks to me more like a small drum. Wiki summarizes him as:

Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski was a Polish general, minister of war and army chief, who became a Marshal of the French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars.

A drum would be an appropriate accessory in a portrait of a child with such a future.

Of course he interests me as another Prince Poniatowski, a cousin, I think, of the one who commissioned the famous gems.

 

I can't really tell for sure, but looks more like a strap to me. The way the (weirdly small) right hand is clasped around it makes me think it is holding something very slender. Although the title says it's a tambourine, it looks to me more like a small drum. Wiki summarizes him as:

Prince Józef Antoni Poniatowski was a Polish general, minister of war and army chief, who became a Marshal of the French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars.

A drum would be an appropriate accessory in a portrait of a child with such a future.

Of course he interests me as another Prince Poniatowski, a cousin, I think, of the one who commissioned the famous gems.