Lot 84
  • 84

Thomas Gainsborough R.A. 1727 - 1788

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Description

  • Thomas Gainsborough R.A.
  • Portrait of Anne Thistlethwaite, Countess of Chesterfield (1759-1798)
  • oil on canvas
half length, wearing a cream dress

Provenance

By descent from the sitter to Lieutenant-Colonel Evelyn William Thistlethwaite;
By descent to his nephew, Frank-Hugh Pakenham Borthwick-Norton who married Eva Sardinia Borthwick-Norton, by whose executors bequeathed to the Royal Scottish Academy 

Literature

Ellis Waterhouse, Gainsborough, 1958, p.59, no.142

Catalogue Note

The sitter was the daughter of the Revd. Thomas Thistlethwaite, of Norman Court, Hampshire, and his wife, Selina, daughter of Peter Bathurst, of Clarendon Park, Wiltshire.  On 20th August 1777 she was married, as his first wife, to Philip Stanhope, 5th Earl of Chesterfield who had succeeded in 1773 to the title and to the substantial family estates at Bretby in Derbyshire. He was responsible for employing Wyatville to rebuild Bretby, a task completed by his only son, the 6th Earl.