Studio of Sir Peter Lely

Anonymous sale, New York, Sotheby's, 29 January 2009, lot 13.

Scholarly debate is divided as to the attribution of this intimate head study, and whilst some believe it to be a studio production, there are others who think that this is an unfinished sketch by Sir Peter Lely himself. Comparison can be drawn with Lely’s unfinished sketch of James, Duke of York (National Portrait Gallery, London), and indeed there is much to suggest that the present work is a related portrait of his wife Anne Hyde, Duchess of York.¹ As with the study of James, Duke of York, this portrait has clearly been cut from a larger canvas, and lined into a carefully tailored surround, and shows all the signs of having been an ad vivum sketch, made directly in front of the sitter.  The diarist Samuel Pepys vividly described the large number of sketches and unfinished  portraits to be found in Lely’s studio when he visited the artist in April 1666 and noticed, "heads, some finished and all begun...’.² 

Anne was the eldest daughter of Edward Hyde, 1^st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674) by his second wife, Frances, daughter of Sir Thomas Aylesbury, Bt. (d. 1668). She accompanied her family to Antwerp during the Commonwealth, and in 1654 was appointed Maid of Honour to the Princess of Orange, Amalia van Solms (1602-1675). It is during her stay in Antwerp that she may also have first met the young Lely, and artist who become the leading court painter after the Restoration, and whom she would sit to on numerous occasions.

1. See O. Millar, The Tudor, Stuart and Early Georgian Pictures, London 1963, p. 121, no. 242.
2. Quoted in O. Millar, Sir Peter Lely 1618-1680, exhibition catalogue National Portrait Gallery, London 1978, p. 61.