Sir Peter Lely

By descent within the family of the artist

London, Grosvenor Place, The Reign of Charles II, 1932, no. 347;
on loan to the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (1989-2016)

P. Hulton, 'Sir Peter Lely: Portrait Drawings of his Family', Connoisseur, vol. CLIV, 1963, pp. 166-70, no. 3;
L. Stainton and C. White, Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth, London 1987, p. 126  

This drawing dates to the middle of the 1660s and depicts Lely’s common-law wife Ursula when a young woman. Fashionably attired, with her hair carefully arranged in ringlets and a dress decorated with a row of five pearls, she addresses the viewer with the beginnings of a smile. In her delicate hands she holds a glass vase or phial, which may symbolise purity, fertility and motherhood.

Little is known about Lely’s relationship with Ursula. She may have worked in his household for a time and the date of their marriage is not recorded. They did, however, have two children together, Anne, who was born in circa 1662 and John in 1668. The couple had a third child in the first days of 1673 – however Ursula died as a result of complications from the birth and was buried on the 11 January at St Paul’s, Convent Garden. The baby, Peter, also did not survive and was buried in the same church five days later.

Although the darkened paper tones have obscured many of the finer details of this image, beautiful passages of draughtsmanship can nonetheless be observed. Ursula’s left arm and hand are particularly fine, while her saffron-coloured shawl is delicately achieved.

As a signed drawing, the work belongs to ‘the small group of highly finished portrait drawings that Lely made as independent works of art’.¹ The sheet’s size, only a few centimetres larger than Lely’s earlier self-portrait, may indicate that it was intended to act as a pendant to that work and to hang alongside it at their Convent Garden home, for their family and friends to enjoy.

The present work is the only surviving likeness of Ursula and as with the two other portrait drawings by Lely in this sale, it has remained in the artist’s family since it was drawn. 

^{1. L. Stainton and C. White, op. cit., p. 123}