An Unknown Shepherdess
manner of Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1600 - 1699
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1590 x 1240 x 45 mm
Order this imageCollection
Chirk Castle, Wrexham
NT 1171157
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, An Unknown Shepherdess manner of Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680). A three-quarter-length portrait of a young woman, seated, facing frontally, gazing at spectator, with fair hair, heavily curled with a cascade of ringlets and curls falling down over her left shoulder, wearing a décolleté russet dress with blue drapery, a shepherdess’s staff in her left hand, a lamb at the left, to which she is offering leaves with her right hand; landscape background. Once called Nell Gwynn, but probably based on Lely's portrait of Henriette de Kerouaille, Countess of Pembroke, at Wilton House, but with a different face and colouring of the hair.
Provenance
With some of the contents, in 1978, that were acquired along with Chirk Castle from Lt-Col Ririd Myddelton (1902–1988) by the National Land Fund and handed, on loan for 99 years, to the Secretary of State for Wales (In 1981 Chirk was transferred into the ownership of the National Trust); accepted by the Inland Revenue in lieu of Inheritance Tax from the estate of Lt-Col Ririd Myddelton (1902–1988) and transferred to the National Trust for display to the public at Chirk Castle in 1999
Credit line
Chirk Castle, The Myddelton Collection (National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Verso: Inscribed in ink on an old label on the back: Gallery No.15
Makers and roles
manner of Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680), artist