Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper
Old Master Day Sale including Old Master Paintings, Drawings and British Works on Paper
Lot Closed
July 29, 12:57 PM GMT
Estimate
26,000 - 35,000 GBP
Lot Details
Description
SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A.
Plympton, Devon 1723 - 1792 London
PORTRAIT OF MARY, COUNTESS OF COURTOWN (D. 1810), HALF-LENGTH, WEARING A PINK DRESS, BLACK LACE SHAWL, AND HOLDING A SPRAY OF CARNATIONS
inscribed on the stretcher: This / portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds of the Countess of Courtown Lady of the Bed Chamber / to Queen Charlotte, to be an heirloom.
oil on canvas
unframed: 91.8 x 72 cm.; 36⅛x 28⅜in
framed: 113 x 90 cm.; 44½ x 35½ in.
To view Shipping Calculator, please click here
By descent in the family of the sitter to Thomas Powys, 1st Baron Lilford (1743–1800);
Private collection, USA;
Anonymous sale, London, Christie's, 8 June 2006, lot 44.
A. Graves and W.V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A., London 1899, vol. II, p. 745; and vol. IV, pp. 1387–88 and 1480.
The sitter was the daughter of Richard Powis (or Powys), of Hintlesham Hall, Suffolk, and his wife, Lady Mary Brudenell, daughter of George Brudenell, 3rd Earl of Cardigan (1685–1732). Reynolds' notebooks relate that Mary Powis first sat to him with her sister Elizabeth, in 1759, and it is probable that the present portrait dates to around this same time; Reynolds depicted Mary again in 1762, wearing an elaborately ruched dress and a feather boa.1 Mary married James Viscount Stopford, who later became 2nd Earl of Courtown in 1770, that same year.
Mary Lady Courtown was appointed Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Charlotte in 1788. Fanny Burney, later known as Madame d'Arblay (1752–1840) recorded the appointment in her diary, remarking that ‘Lady Courtown [...] is constantly cheerful and obliging, and seems invariably in good humour and good spirits’ (18 August 1788).
We are grateful to Professor David Mannings for endorsing the attribution to Reynolds on the basis of digital images.