Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.

Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar (1797-1864), by 1840;
By descent until sold, The Novar Collection sale, London, Christie's, 6 April 1878, lot 45 (as Contemplation, Hon. Mrs. Stanhope, mother of Lady Southampton, painted as Miss Faulkner) to Agnew's, on behalf of Baroness de Rothschild;
Emma Louise von Rothschild, Baroness de Rothschild (1844-1935);
Thence by descent until sold through Thos. Agnew and Colnaghi, London, to the current owner in 1976.

London, Royal Academy, 1787, no. 76;
London, British Institution, 1840, no. 43, as Contemplation (lent by H.A.J. Munro).

A. Graves & W.V. Cronin, History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London 1899-1901, vol. III, p. 930-931;
E. Waterhouse, Reynolds, London 1973, p. 78;
E. Wind and J. Anderson (ed.) Hume and the Heroic Portrait: Studies in Eighteenth Century Imagery, Oxford 1986, p. 46;
Agnew's, Picture Stockbook, no. 4;
D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds:  A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, London 2000, vol. I, p. 433, cat. no. 1701, reproduced vol. II, fig. 1492.

Engraved
By Caroline Watson (c.1760-1814), engraver to Queen Charlotte, published 1790.

The following condition report is provided by Hamish Dewar, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. EXAMINATION / TREATMENT REPORT UNCONDITIONAL AND WITHOUT PREJUDICE Structural Condition The canvas has an old lining which is still providing a secure structural support. Paint Surface The paint surface has a discoloured and slightly uneven varnish layer and inspection under ultra- violet light confirms how discoloured the varnish layers have become and how well the painting would respond to cleaning. Inspection under ultra-violet light also identifies a number of retouchings, the most concentrated of which are in the dark pigments of the curtain behind the sitter. These retouchings are clearly larger than is necessary and could be reduced with more careful inpainting. There are also retouchings upon the sitter's white dress which are most concentrated just above the lower horizontal framing edge. There are minimal retouchings on the flesh tones and in the sitter's hair with just fine lines in-filling craquelure on her neck and chest. There are other scattered areas of inpainting, all of which again appear larger than is really necessary. The fine details of the painting appear to be intact. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be good and stable condition and should respond very well to cleaning, restoration and revarnishing. Frame The carved and gilded frame has scattered losses and small damages to the carved details.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Painted in 1786, and exhibited at the Royal Academy the following year, this beautiful and romantically charged portrait dates from the period of some of Reynolds’s most celebrated work. The sitter was the wife of Capt. the Hon. Henry Fitzroy Stanhope (1754-1828), of the 1^st Foot Guards, the second son of William Stanhope, 2^nd Earl of Harrington, and his wife Lady Caroline Fitzroy (1722-1784), daughter of Charles Fitzroy, 2^nd Duke of Grafton (1683-1757), whom she married circa 1783. She had two children by Henry; Robert (1802-1839), a Captain in the Royal Navy, who married Elizabeth Rosemund Stanley, but died without issue, and Harriet (d. 1860), who became Lady Southampton when she married Charles FitzRoy, 3^rd Baron Southampton in 1826.

Elizabeth was one of the many fashionable beauties of her day with an artistic disposition, and was engaged with contemporary theatrical and literary culture. Noted by contemporaries for her lively disposition she was once counted among the society group that formed Lady Craven’s corps dramatique. An author, playwright and socialite of some repute, Lady Craven (1750-1838) was associated with the cultural and literary circle that surrounded Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, and became a close friend of Horace Walpole, who published some of her early work in the 1770s. Elizabeth first sat to Reynolds in 1782, before her marriage to Henry Stanhope, for a portrait which is now untraced.¹ The composition of that portrait is only known through a studio version in a private collection, and an engraving after the original by Smith, but shows the sitter in contemplative and melancholy mood. This later portrait is much more confident in its approach. Painted over only four sittings in October and November 1786, it is an informal and yet striking composition, with the sitter dressed simply in a plain white dress, which serves to emphasize the mood and personality of the sitter, as well as her beauty, whilst the background retains the heavy curtain, classical column and dramatic landscape associated with traditional grand manner portraiture.  Her wistful gaze and reclining posture imbue the sitter with an enigmatic beauty and allure which are illustrative of the principals of heroic portraiture which Reynolds was keen to imbue in his students, and which were promulgated in his Discourses.   

The pose is closely related to that in Reynolds’s portrait of Mrs Siddons as the Tragic Muse (Huntington Art Gallery, San Marino, California), which is one of the artist’s most celebrated female portraits. As Wind originally pointed out, both these works have their antecedents in Michelangelo, particularly the figure of Isaiah from the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and are a result of Reynolds’s period of study in Italy in the 1750s. However a more immediate source of inspiration for the pose in this picture can probably be found in later Baroque examples, particularly works such as Guido Reni’s Magdalene, which Reynolds would have seen in the Barberini Collection in Rome, and David Mannings has noted the striking similarity with a Magdalene by the little-know Bolognese artist Teresa Muratori,² formerly in the Castle at Postdam-Sanssouci.³

The painting has a distinguished provenance, and was part of the collection formed by Hugh Andrew Johnstone Munro of Novar, the distinguished art collector and patron. The son of Sir Alexander Munro, one time Consul-General in Madrid, and his wife Margaret Johnstone, Munro succeeded to large estates and a sizable fortune on the death of his father in 1809. In 1816 he was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn but there is no record of him ever being called to the bar and he occupied himself chiefly as an amateur artist and distinguished collector. Together with Elhanan Bicknell he was one of the chief patrons of J.M.W. Turner, with whom he became a close friend, and travelled through France to Italy with him in 1836 on a sketching tour. He also financed Turner’s two trips to Venice in 1833 and 1844, and was one of four trustees for Turner’s charity for the relief of distressed artists, as well as one of the executors of his will.

Unlike Bicknell, however, in addition to his extensive collection of works by Turner, which included Venice from the Porch of the Madonna della Salute (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), commissioned by Munro in 1837, as well as Modern Rome – Campo Vaccino, which made the record for any British artist at auction when it sold in these Rooms for £29.9 million in 2010 (now Getty Museum, Los Angeles), as well as works by other contemporary British artists, Munro was also an avid and discerning collector of Old Masters. His collection included Raphael’s Madonna dei Candelabri (Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore), Rembrandt’s Lucretia (National Gallery of Art, Washington), Veronese’s Vision of St. Helena (National Gallery, London), Titian’s Rest on the Flight into Egypt (Private Collection), as well as works by Claude, Poussin, Rubens, Watteau, and a large number by modern British painters; including thirteen paintings by Reynolds, twelve by Bonington, six Constables, and fifty-six pictures by William Etty, as well as a number of works by the Scottish artist Sir David Wilkie. By the time he died in 1864 the collection numbered some 2,500 paintings, all of which were sold off over the course of eighteen years in a series of seven sales between 1860 and 1878.

1. see D. Mannings, under Literature. p. 432, no. 1699.
2. Mannings, op.cit, p. 433.
3. R. Roli, Pitta Bolognese 1650-1800: dal Cignani ai Gandolfi, Bologna 1977, reproduced, fig. 148c.