John Michael Wright

Estimate

1,500 - 2,000 GBP

bidding is closed

Description

John Michael Wright
Portrait of Mary Villiers, Duchess of Lennox and Richmond (1622-1685), with her children, Esmé Stuart, 2nd Duke of Richmond (1649-1660) and Mary Stuart (1651-1668), the future Countess of Arran
indistinctly signed and dated centre right: M. Wright / 1655
oil on canvas

Provenance

Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 10 November 1995, lot 71.

Literature

L. Stainton and C. White, Drawing in England from Hilliard to Hogarth, exh. cat., London 1987, p. 123, under cat. no. 87.

Catalogue Note

This much damaged and restored painting is the only signed work among a number of versions of this portrait group by Wright and his studio, the identity of the sitters in which has been the source of some confusion.

When last sold, the present work was described as Lady Elizabeth Churchill, wife of Sir Winston Churchill of Wootton Glanville in Dorset, with her children Winston and Arabella, siblings of John Churchill (1650-1722), the future general and later Duke of Marlborough. An almost identical composition, of similar dimensions, is held at the Tate, London (96.5 x 119.5 cm.)¹, another, slightly larger version (106.3 x 129.5 cm.) was sold London, Christie's, 5 December 2012, lot 213, and a previously unpublished painting from the collection of the Legges, Earls of Dartmouth was sold London, Phillips, 10 July 2001, lot 121. This last work was identified by Sir Oliver Millar as that listed in an inventory of circa 1735 (Staffordshire Record Office) as a half-length portrait of Mary Villiers and her children.

Another portrait showing the two children alone, is in the collection of the Dukes of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire, on which a relatively modern label identifies the subjects as the Churchill children, but it is not known when the work entered the collection, nor when this identification was attached to the sitters.²

There is a half-length preparatory chalk drawing for the figure of the boy with an urn, which also appears in the Blenheim portrait, the mount of which is inscribed with a late-18th-century or early 19th-century hand: 'The Duke of Richmond' (National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh).³ The urn bears an epitaph: 'RAPTVS EST NE MALATIA MVTARET INTELLECTVM EIVS' suggesting the drawing was completed posthumously - Esmé Stuart died of smallpox at the age of 11. His mother Mary - daughter of the 1st Duke of Buckingham, favourite of both James I and Charles I - married James Stuart, 1st Duke of Richmond (1612-1655) as her second husband in 1637. Their son's death was lamented at the highest level of society; the Venetian ambassador in London wrote on 3 September 1660 that the child had been 'of great promise, and the king and Court are much grieved.'⁴

1. Inv. no. T06455; see Tate Report 1990–92, London 1992, p. 47, reproduced.
2. See Stainton and White 1987, exh. cat., p. 123, under cat. no. 87, reproduced p. 122.
3. Inv. no. D 5333; see Stainton and White 1987, exh. cat., p. 123, cat. no. 87, reproduced p. 122.
4. Cited in G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Peerage, vol. 10, London 1945, p. 834.