SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. | Portrait of Lady Mary Leslie (1753-99), full-length, with lambs in a landscape

Alphonse Kann, Saint-Germain-en-Laye;

Confiscated from the above by the Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg, November 1940 (ERR no. Ka 61);

Recovered by the Monuments, Fine Art and Archives Section at Alt Aussee, Austria (no. 204/5); 

Transferred to the Munich Central Collecting Point, 20 June 1945 (MCCP no. 210/5); 

Repatriated to France, 31 July 1946, and restituted to Alphonse Kann, 11 July 1947;

Private collection, France.

An extremely rare survival, this sketch is a compositional study for Reynolds’ Portrait of Mary Leslie, part of the Iveagh Bequest at Kenwood House, London (painted in 1764).¹ The present sketch is one of only a handful of surviving studies which Reynolds was known to have completed for his more ambitious portrait commissions.² The sketch displays numerous differences in the composition: to the pose of the lamb to the lower right; the more elaborate headdress; and in the omission of the bunches of flowers, which appear in the finished work. Lady Mary Leslie was the youngest daughter of John Leslie, 10th Earl of Rhothes (1698-1767), and was married to William Colyear, 3rd Earl of Portmore (1745-1823).

The attribution to Reynolds is endorsed by Dr. Martin Postle.

1 https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/lady-mary-leslie-191819#

2 For a full discussion on the compositional portrait sketches by Reynolds, see D. Mannings, 'Reynolds Oil Sketches', in The Burlington Magazine, August 1991, vol. 133, no. 1061, pp. 491-98.