English: Mary Stopford (d 1810), née Powys, Countess of Courtown, half-length, wearing a pink dress, black lace shawl, and holding a spray of carnations.

inscribed on the stretcher: This / portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of the Countess of Courtown Lady of the Bed Chamber / to Queen Charlotte, to be an heirloom.

The sitter was the daughter of Richard Powis (or Powys), of Hintlesham Hall, Suffolk, and his wife, Lady Mary Brudenell, daughter of George Brudenell, 3rd Earl of Cardigan (1685–1732). Reynolds' notebooks relate that Mary Powis first sat to him with her sister Elizabeth, in 1759, and it is probable that the present portrait dates to around this same time; Reynolds depicted Mary again in 1762, wearing an elaborately ruched dress and a feather boa.1 Mary married James Viscount Stopford, who later became 2nd Earl of Courtown in 1770, that same year.

Mary Lady Courtown was appointed Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Charlotte in 1788. Fanny Burney, later known as Madame d'Arblay (1752–1840) recorded the appointment in her diary, remarking that ‘Lady Courtown [...] is constantly cheerful and obliging, and seems invariably in good humour and good spirits’ (18 August 1788).