Catherine Bower, Lady Ashe or Mrs Packer (c.1671 - 1717)
Sir Godfrey Kneller (Lübeck 1646 - London 1723)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1690
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1240 x 1020 mm
Order this imageCollection
Felbrigg, Norfolk
NT 1401202
Caption
This picture was painted around 1690, so cannot, as used to be thought, show Elizabeth Dobyns, wife of Ashe Windham, who was born only in 1693. It may be the portrait of a mysterious ‘Mrs Packer’ listed in the 1771 inventory at Felbrigg, where this picture hangs, or even of Catherine Bowyer, Lady Ashe, a portrait of whom was also listed. In 1698, Lady Ashe had married Sir James Ashe, 2nd Bt. (1674-1733), who turned her out of the house for refusing him his conjugal rights after his adultery.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Catherine Bower, Lady Ashe or Mrs. Packer (c.1671 - 1717) by Sir Godfrey Kneller (Lübeck 1646/9 - London 1723), circa 1690. A three-quarter-length portrait of a woman seated in front of trees with a dog on her lap, wearing a yellow brown dress and a dark blue scarf.
Full description
Identified in the Felbrigg Catalogue as Elizabeth Dobyns, wife of Ashe Windham, and listed as in the manner of Dahl, with the qualification that David Piper had suggested D'Agar as the artist. But is that really this picture? There is no particular reason to think that the pictures in the Dining Room have been swapped about since it was stuccoed, with places specifically created for certain portraits, particularly since they are all still in uniform Maratta frames; in which case it is +15, that was identified - however mistakenly - with "Mr. Ash Windham his Lady" [i.e. Eliz. Dobyns] in the 1764 and 1771 inventories, and that Ketton Cremer mentions as "his wife possibly by Dahl" as framed by the plasterwork of the Dining Room, in his Felbrigg (1962 & 1976, p.135). According to Oliver Millar this is an undoubted Kneller of the 1680s but [quaere if not as late as c.1690? (cf. " Mrs Grivill, s. & d. 1693, submitted to NT; Dorothy, Css. of Coventry, Antony, s. & d.1693; and Mary Sackville, Countess of Orrery, Knole, c.1692/3: the hair of all these may be worked up a little higher, so that a date around 1690 would not seem unreasonable for the present picture)]. This precludes the possibility of it representing Elizabeth Dobyns, who was born in 1693. The sitter must belong to the previous generation. The person whose portrait was recorded at Felbrigg in 1771, in the Red Dressing Room (along with the portraits of Lord & Lady Townshend, which - like it - are in Maratta frames), and who might around 1690 have been the age of the sitter in this portrait, is [Catherine Bowyer], Lady Ash, the wife of Sir James Ashe, 2nd Bt., whose portrait - albeit no longer identifiable at Felbrigg - was there along with hers. It is true that we only know that they married some time in 1698 [this tallies with Sir James being admitted to the Twickenham estate that year (cf. Maureen Bunch, Cambridge Park, Twickenham, and its owners, 1616-1835, 1989, p.14)] and that Sir James was only born in 1674, so that if his wife had, as was usual, been the same age as, or younger that, himself, she could scarcely have been the person represented here; but since the marriage was one contracted in opposition to Sir James's widowed mother, whilst he was disparaged as "a very feeble son" (Bunch, 1989, p.14), Catherine Bowyer could equally well have been the older and more forceful partner [but her father, Sir Edmund Bowyer of Camberwell, and her mother, Martha Wilson, widow of Sir Edward Cropley (+1664/5), only contracted their respective second marriage to each other in Jan. 1670/71 so that she could not have been much more that 20 around the time of this portrait]. The chief problem about with the identification of this sitter as Catherine Bowyer, over and above the possible obstacle of the age of the latter when this portrait was painted, is her lack of resemblance to Catherine Bowyer as painted by Closterman soon after his return to London in 1700 - the :-length that was in the collection of the successors to her friend, the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury, Kneller, until sold from St. Giles's House at Christie's, 27 June 1980, lot 148 (cf. exh. cat. John Closterman NTG, 1981, no.16; and Malcolm Rogers, ,John and John Baptist Closterman', The Walpole Society, vol. XLIX (1983), cat.4, p.239 & pl.59; subsequently in the coll. of Michael Wells, Frankham, until sold at Christie's 25 Sept. 1989, lot 294). [Closterman had sent his compliments to Sir James & Lady Ashe, and to her half-brother, Sir John Cropley, 2nd Bt,. in a postscript to a letter from Rome to the Earl of Shaftesbury in 1699, saying that he was "in hopes to draw a family picture to her as soon as I come home"]. Nothing, by contrast, seems to be known of "Mrs Parker", so it is impossible to say whether the portrait of her in the 1771 inventory was by Kneller, or even of this date. The existence of a bill of exactly the right date, for "Mr. Kneller my picture ,10-0-0" in the account-book of Katherine Ashe, Mrs. William Windham, under 1686/87 (cf. J. Douglas Stewart, Kneller, 1983, p.193), might have made it very tempting to link the present picture with that though John Maddison has also fiund an earlier payment in her accuont-book of the smae sum, and for " my picture to Mr Kneller", under 1683/4 ( see his letter of 10 October 1994) but again, not only is there absolutely no likeness - not even the same colour hair - with the Lely that has been regarded as of that sitter since at least 1764 (17), but by this date ,10 would only have paid for a bust-portrait - which must therefore be presumed lost. The Maratta frame on this picture strongly suggests that it was one of those already at Felbrigg to be listed in 1771; in which case ,Lady Ash' or ,Mrs. Packer' seem the only possible candidates for identification with it. But there is a comparable difficulty over identifying a portrait with such a frame with one of those listed in 1764 or 1771 in the case of +15, - and that picture even forms part of the set in stucco surrounds in the Dining Room. It has been suggested that, if that is not of the only at least potentially plausible sitter, Sarah Hicks, Mrs. William Windham II (which would anyway have been brought from another room), it may be of a sitter potentially of the appropriate age from the family that subsequently married into Felbrigg that was of appropriate standing to have had a portrait such as that painted: the Wyndhams of Cromer - specifically, Elizabeth Dalton, Mrs. John Wyndham. The same family would seem to provide a member of the appropriate age to be the sitter in the present portrait in, or a little before, 1690: Sarah Dayrell, the wife of Francis Wyndham (1656-1730).
Provenance
Part of the Windham Collection. The hall and contents were bequeathed to the National Trust in 1969 by Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer (1906-1969)
Makers and roles
Sir Godfrey Kneller (Lübeck 1646 - London 1723), artist previously catalogued as manner of Michael Dahl (Stockholm 1659 - London 1743), artist