Circular miniature in watercolour on ivory, in a circular gilt metal suspension locket, the ivory having a spliced join towards the left edge. The sitter is shown half-length, probably standing, facing out to the viewer but with her blue eyes glancing up to her right and her left arm raised and resting on an unseen support, with the hand visible holding the corner of the drapery swathed over both her head an that arm. She is dressed in the Roman classical style, in white but with fine red- and gold-line embroidery, on the loose robe and shawl. There is a red ribbon acting as a belt at the waist. The general tone is warm and the background a neutral light brown.The image is inscribed in white round the top right edge: 'Harriett Beckford 1809', though the date is a little indistinct.

There are various images of Lady Hamilton, including miniatures, in the NMM collection: for her biography see BHC2736, which is a 1786 oil portrait by Romney. This item appears to show her in one of her celebrated 'attitudes', possibly as a Sybil, which was a role in which she was also painted at Naples by Mme Le Brun. It is not yet known if Beckford met and perhaps sketched her there in the 1790s, or derived the image from another source, though it is not a copy from the Rehberg 'attitude' prints. It is, however, the miniature which in 1972 Daphne Foskett recorded ('Dictionary of British Miniature Painters') as having been in Ernest Salaman's collection, though she only seems to have known of it from a secondary source which gave the date as 1803. It was purchased from Miss Salaman, using the Museum's Caird Fund, in 1955. Harriet Beckford (1779-1853) was from the county aristocracy of Dorset, being the daughter of Peter Beckford MP, of Irwerne Steepleton (1740 -1811), and his wife Louisa, second daughter of George Pitt, 1st Baron Rivers. She became a Member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence on 27 September 1797 but few works by her are now recorded. On 27 January 1807, she married Henry Seymer, later Ker-Seymer (1782-1834), of Hanford, Dorset, who was Deputy Lieutenant of that county and its High Sheriff in 1810. They had two sons and a daughter, and while her work as, in essence, a talented lady amateur clearly continued into her married life it was probably fairly limited. In the early 1830s she was also a friend and correspondent of Henry Fox-Talbot, the pioneer of photography. Her elder brother William Horace (1777-1831) became 3rd Baron Rivers on the death of his uncle in 1828, when he formally adopted the name Pitt-Rivers.