HUGH DOUGLAS HAMILTON | Portrait of Elizabeth, Countess of Aldborough, as Hebe

By descent from the sitter to her great-nephew Thomas Stratford Dennis (1781–1870), Co. Wicklow, Ireland;
Thence by direct descent

A. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, The Painters of Ireland, c. 1660–1920, London 1978, pp. 93–94, reproduced fig. 82;
A. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin, Ireland's Painters 1600–1940, New Haven and London 2002, p. 111.

The painting is exceptionally well preserved and in fantastic condition. The canvas is unlined, which is extremely rare for a painting of this date and size, and the surface of the paint is exquisitely intact. There is a thick and very dirty varnish overall – which gives the painting a very yellow hew and disguises much for the detail – and there is considerable surface dirt overall as well. There are a number of old tears and scattered minor damages which have been crudely repaired. The most notable of these are an old vertical tear, approximately 16 in. long, in the upper right, running through the green drapery of the throne; another old vertical tear approximately 6 in. long to the left of the upper hand, running just into the ewer; a multi branched old vertical tear in the upper left far corner, approximately 8 ½ in. long; and two further old vertical tears, approximately 1–2 in. long, upper left and in the lower left corner. Examination under ultraviolet light confirms the crude retouching to these damages, and reveals a small number of further minor scattered retouchings throughout, which fluoresce under UV together with numerous flecks of surface dirt. There is one very small pin sized hole in the canvas, in the drapery around the upper leg. The painting would respond extremely well to cleaning and restoration and is an exceptionally rare example of an eighteenth century picture in such a remarkable and relatively untouched state of preservation. The picture is held in an impressive carved gilt wood, neo-classical frame.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

This important picture, painted in the 1790s, is an outstanding example of the artist’s later work, and a masterpiece of eighteenth-century Irish portraiture. Hamilton, ‘one of the finest painters ever to come out of Ireland’,¹ studied at the Dublin Schools in the 1750s, where he won several prizes, before moving to London and then, in the early 1780s, to Italy. He spent almost a decade studying in Florence, where he was elected to the Accademia del Disegno in 1784, and working in Rome, where he became celebrated for his portraits of British and Irish Grand Tourists. The present work was painted in Dublin, following Hamilton’s return from Italy to Ireland, when the artist was at the height of his powers and esteemed as one of the greatest portraitists in Europe. Demonstrating the influence of French neo-classicism on his later work, Hamilton represents his sitter as Hebe, goddess of youth, leaning against the throne of her father Zeus. She is accompanied by Zeus himself in the guise of an eagle, to which she offers her ewer as cupbearer to the gods, and supported by his thunderbolts which rest on the arms of the throne. The conceit was a popular one in late eighteenth-century portraiture, bestowing upon the sitter the allure of eternal youth, and other such contemporary personifications of Hebe include Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of Mrs Musters (Kenwood House, London), Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun’s Portrait of Anna Pitt (The Hermitage, St Petersburg) and Jean Marc Nattier’s Portrait of Louise Henriette de Bourbon, Duchess of Orléans (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm). The Countess of Aldborough was the eldest daughter and heiress of the Reverend Frederick Hamilton, Archdeacon of Raphoe, grand-daughter of Lord Archibald Hamilton (1673–1754), and great-granddaughter of William, 3rd Duke of Hamilton. In 1777 she married Lord John Stratford (c. 1740–1823), later 3rd Earl of Aldborough, with whom she had three daughters: Elizabeth, who married John, 1st Baron Tollemache (1805–1890); Louisa-Martha, who married John Rodney, younger son of Admiral Lord Rodney, the hero of Cape St Vincent and the Battle of the Saints; and Emily (d. 1863), who married Captain Thomas Best (d. 1829), the finest shot in England, famous in Georgian London for killing Thomas Pitt, 2nd Baron Camelford in a duel in 1804.

A notorious society figure in Ireland, Lady Aldborough was, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine, ‘a Dublin toast, and the best horse-woman in Ireland’.² She appears to have largely abandoned her husband and kept a house at Brighton and a Salon at Temple Hill, Dublin. She had many admirers, among them the future Duke of Wellington and Lord Nelson, for whom she is said to have performed shawl dances in the manner of Emma Hamilton. Legend has it that she met the young Lieutenant Wellesley, then serving as ADC at Dublin Castle, at a ball in the city and took him off for a late night ride in her carriage. Tiring of his company she drove home without him, leaving the future Iron Duke to make his own way back to his barracks with the fiddlers who had played at the ball. Many years later, after the Congress of Vienna, she is said to have bumped into the Duke in Paris and told him that she did not realise at the time of the incident that, eventually, he would become the first Fiddler.³ Famous for her bold repartee she was described as ‘rather a coarse wit’, and allegedly Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, refused to have her at Court. Nevertheless Captain Rees Howell Gronow (1794–1865), a diarist writing in 1860, said that her sayings were quoted all over Europe. Perhaps the most famous of these came when, on hearing of the unfortunate Princess de Leon, who had been burned to death when her dress caught fire at a ball in Paris in 1815, and being told that her husband, the Prince, had been more a brother than a husband to his wife, Lady Aldborough is said to have exclaimed, ‘What, a virgin as well as a Martyr, really, that’s too much’.

In later life she lived in Paris, where she was friends with King Louis Philippe and Lucien Bonaparte. Always discreet about her age, in her late 70s a French official is said to have remarked, on inspecting her passport, ‘Madam I think you must be over 25’, to which she replied rather haughtily, ‘Monsieur, you are the first Frenchman who ever questioned what a Lady says about her age’; whilst the Duchess of Sutherland is said to have declared, on being told of the invention of a new calculating machine, ‘I wish I could calculate two things, first Lady Aldborough’s age and secondly, whether the Tories will ever again come back to power’.⁴ Lady Aldborough died in Paris on 29 January 1846 at the age of about 92. Her death, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine, ‘deprived fashionable society of one of its most fascinating ornaments’.

1. Crookshank and the Knight of Glin 2002, pp. 104–05.
2. The Complete Peerage, London 1910, vol. I, p. 99.
3. G.H. Stratford, A History of the Stratford Family, 1988 (online, chapter 11).
4. G.H. Stratford, A History of the Stratford Family, 1988 (online, chapter 11).