Half-length portrait study of a woman wearing a cap and pearl earrings

After training in Antwerp, the young Van Aken went to London, where he specialized in painting draperies. The leading portraitists there, including Joseph Highmore, Thomas Hudson, and Allan Ramsay, often painted only a sitter's face, relying on Van Aken to finish the rest of the figure. His work became ubiquitous, to the point that the collector and writer Horace Walpole remarked wryly: "As in England almost everybody's picture is painted, so almost every painter's works were painted by Van Aken."
An assistant probably made this portrait study, but it demonstrates Van Aken's typical attention to texture. The satin gown with its bow-bedecked stomacher, the lace collar, the sleeves, and the cap have all been differentiated by black and white chalk and further defined with touches of brown ink. The design was then overlaid with a graphite grid to allow it to be transferred accurately onto canvas.