Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A.

Commissioned by the Hon. James Stuart Wortley in 1845 and thence by family descent to the present owner

Royal Academy, 1847, no.177

Original canvas. Some localised craquelure on her dress, hair and hat. A few abrasions to the tree, and two newer abrasions approx. a cm each with resulting paint loss to the foreground beneath the horse and one behind the lady's skirt, which could be easily restored. The surface is dirty and should benefit well from cleaning. Ultraviolet light reveals an opaque, dirty varnish. There appear to be some small, cosmetic retouchings to some parts of the canvas, not excessive. Held in a gilt plaster frame.
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This elegant portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1847 as The Hon. Mrs. J. Wortley but was begun in 1845 when the sitter was Miss Jane Lawley (1820-1900), the only daughter of the politician Paul Beilby Lawley Thompson, 1st Lord Wenlock. Her first sitting was at 9pm on 18th November 1845 following dinner at her father's residence at 29 Berkeley Square. She was accompanied by her father and by Lord and Lady Wharncliffe and their youngest son the Hon. James Stuart Wortley. The night of her first sitting coincided with the announcement of the engagement between James and Jane and the commission of the portrait was to celebrate the union. They were married on 6 May 1846. Jane was a highly accomplished equestrienne and Grant depicted her riding on a half-bred mare named Lily.

James Archibald Stuart-Wortley was a Privy Counsellor and Fellow of Merton College in Oxford. He went on to hold office as Solicitor General for England and Wales under Lord Palmerston from November 1856 until May 1857. Jane was a gregarious hostess and noted beauty, mother of seven children and a well-respected philanthropist.

Grant's patrons were from some of the most important aristocratic families, including the Earl of Cardigan, Lady Glenlyon, the Marchioness of Waterford and Marquis of Londonderry. He was the son of a Perthshire laird and began life as part of the fashionable Edinburgh society set and the hunting coterie of Melton Mowbray. However by the time he was twenty-six he had spent the entire fortune that he had inherited and therefore became a professional painter. Therefore he comfortably lived between the two worlds of high society and the more artistic environment of fellow artists, and was as adept in both. As John Steegman has observed; 'The world to which he belonged was not Lawrence's world of the London drawing-rooms. It was rather that of the far more powerful county society: the great landowning families who, with their high sense of responsibility in return for privilege, were the real governing class of their day. All the same, Grant does appear to have frequented the clever but rather d'eclasse circle...' (John Steegman, 'Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., The Artist of High Society', Apollo, June 1964, p.483)

When it was decided that Jane would be painted, Grant was the obvious choice to paint her. Lady Wharncliffe had been painted by Grant in 1839 and Lord Wharncliffe sat in 1843 for a portrait painted for the Magistrates of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The composition of Jane's portrait was based upon the life-sized picture of Queen Victoria painted by Grant in 1845 (Christ's Hospital Foundation).