The Family Collection of the late Countess Mountbatten of Burma

The Family Collection of the late Countess Mountbatten of Burma

View full screen - View 1 of Lot 151. Portrait of Sarah Bate, Mrs William Banks (1719-1804).

John Russell, R.A.

Portrait of Sarah Bate, Mrs William Banks (1719-1804)

Auction Closed

March 24, 08:41 PM GMT

Estimate

4,000 - 6,000 GBP

Lot Details

Description

John Russell, R.A.

Guilford 1745 - 1806 Hull

Portrait of Sarah Bate, Mrs William Banks (1719-1804) 


Pastel, gilt-wood frame;

signed upper right: J. Russell R.A. / pt 1790

597 x 443 mm.

Please note that a request has been made for this lot to be included in the forthcoming exhibition: To Botany Bay and Back: The Worldwide Web of Sir Joseph Banks - 9 May - 16 October 2022, Tower Gallery, Eton College.
Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820), the sitter's son;
his wife Dorothea, Lady Banks (née Hugessen) (1758-1828);
her nephew Sir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Bt (1781-1849)
G.C. Williamson, John Russell, R.A., London, 1894, p. 138, illust. opposite p. 34;
P. O’Brian, Joseph Banks: A Life, London, 1987, illust. opposite p. 112;
N. Jeffares, The Dictionary of Pastellists before 1800, on-line edition, no. J.64.1119

Sarah Bate was the daughter of William Bate and his wife Arabella Chambers. She was a considerable heiress both on her father's and her mother's side. Her father owned Foston Hall near Derby, which had been bought by his father Richard Bate in 1679 from John Agard. Her maternal grandfather Thomas Chambers came from a family of substantial landowners in nearby Scropton. Her mother’s younger sister Hannah Sophia married Brownlow 8th Earl of Exeter in 1724, and it was through this connection that Sarah’s wedding to William Banks on 26th September 1741 took place in the chapel of Burghley House.


Sarah’s husband William Banks was a lawyer who served as MP for Grampound in Cornwall from 1741 to 1747. He had inherited estates at Overton from his grandfather William Hodgkinson, and briefly adopted his name before reverting to Banks when he inherited Revesby Abbey in Lincolnshire from his father in 1741. Sarah brought up her son Joseph and daughter Sarah Sophia in Lincolnshire, but following her husband's death in 1761 she moved to Turret House in Paradise Row in Chelsea, close to the Physic Gardens. Her two children moved out, finally settling in 32 Soho Square where Sarah joined them towards the end of her life, dying there aged eighty five.