Sir Godfrey Kneller, Bt. 1646 - 1723

three-quarter length, wearing a white dress and a blue cloak

By descent to her daughter Jane, Baroness Wharton, wife of Robert Coke, who left her estate to Anne Maria Draycott, wife of George Fermor, 2nd Earl of Pomfret

J. Douglas Stewart, Sir Godfrey Kneller and the English Baroque Portrait, 1983, p.139, no.839

The sitter was the daughter and sole heir of Adam Loftus, Viscount Lisburne and his wife the Hon. Lucy Brydges.  Lord Lisburne was a considerable landowner in Ireland, and on his death in the Irish War on 15th September 1691, left his twenty-one year old daughter substantial estates worth £5,000 per annum and including Rathfarnham Castle.  In July 1692 she married the celebrated politician Thomas, Lord Wharton, son of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton (see lot 48) and his second wife Jane Goodwin.  Goodwin Wharton, his brother, who watched them dance at a ball at Kensington Palace on 6th July 1692, six months before their marriage, called her Thomas's 'new mistress'.  Lucy soon became the toast of the Whig Kit-Cat Club and bore her husband a son called Philip (who later became the famous Duke of Wharton) and two daughters Jane and Lucy.  King William and the Duke of Shrewsbury acted as her son's godfathers and Princess Anne was his godmother.