Judge George Robert Hellen (1725-1793), or Philip Tisdall (1703-1777)

Watermark: none visible through lining.
The Swiss artist Angelica Kauffman painted both portraits and history paintings and was an important figure in the development of Neoclassicism. She was primarily active in Italy, but after attracting the attention of British travelers, she was lured to London and spent nearly 20 years there, where she was among the founding members of the Royal Academy. Internationally famous, she had patrons from Philadelphia to Warsaw.
This portrait is one of three of drawings traditionally identified (on the basis of the inscriptions on the verso) as portraits of George Robert Hellen (1725-1793), an Irish politician and judgem and his wife, Dorothea Hellen (d. 1806); the third drawing is at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University, inv. 1981.301. Despite the inscription, the sitters in the drawings do not bear close resemblance to Kauffman's oil portraits of the couple (now in the National Gallery of Ireland), but they do correspond to the heads of Mr and Mrs Philip Tisdall (1703-1777) in the family group portrait (private collection; sold Sotheby's, London, 12 June 2003, lot 8) as well as the half-length portrait of Philip Tisdall (private collection; sold Dorotheum, Vienna, 2014) that Kaufmann also painted in 1771 during her sojourn in Ireland.