Lady Adelaide Chetwynd-Talbot, Countess Brownlow (1844-1917)
Sir Frank Owen Salisbury RA (Harpenden 1874 – 1962)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1907 - 1908 (exh at RA)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1600 x 1219 mm (63 x 48 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Belton House, Lincolnshire
NT 436112.2
Caption
Frank O. Salisbury was a well-known artist of historical pageantry and this is evident in the style of his portrait of Adelaide, Countess Brownlow. The red and gold brocade of the Renaissance-style dress worn by the Countess is realised in fine and sumptuous detail and the view of the terrace appears more like a stage-set.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Lady Adelaide Chetwynd-Talbot, Countess Brownlow (1844-1917) by Sir Frank Owen Salisbury (Harpenden 1874 – 1962), signed, bottom right: Frank O Salisbury. A three-quarter-length portrait, turned to the left, left profile, dressed in a red and gold embroidered dress and pearl necklace, seated on a terrace. Painted in the boudoir of their other home, Ashridge Park. She was born on 8 July 1844, daughter of Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, 18th Earl of Shrewsbury and Lady Sarah Elizabeth Beresford and married Adelbert Wellington Brownlow Cust, 3rd Earl Brownlow (1844-1921), son of John Hume Egerton, Viscount Alford and Lady Marianne Margaret Compton, on 22 June 1868 at Ford Castle, Northumberland. She died on 16 March 1917 at age 72 at 8 Carlton House Terrace, London, England, after a long illness, without issue. Various descriptions of Lady Brownlow's appearance have survived; one, from Mrs Gladstone in 1875 of the Countess apparently wearing the dress seen in the Leighton portrait 436073: '...at teatime today in white embroidered with gold regular toga sort of thing, and tonight with red beads, white handkerchief on her head. Oh lovely." In 1893 Lady Paget described Lady Brownlow as the 'most beautiful of three sisters, every one of them the salt of the earth. She was seated between Lady Lothian and Lady Pembroke, the former in trailing black and the latter in trailing white draperies. Lady Brownlow was in sober grey of the same make, and they looked like the Three Fates. They all asked questions in high-pitched voices." (Jane Abdy and Charlotte Gere's The Souls, 1984, pp 164-5). Lord and Lady Brownlow were considerable patrons of the arts; he was a trustee of the National Gallery and was responsible for commissioning George Frederic Watts to make a memorial statue to Tennyson in Lincoln; together they were patrons of the Home Arts and Industries Association, with which Mr and Mrs G F Watts, John Ruskin, William Morris and William de Morgan were also involved, and the object of which was to provide artistic work for the poor and disadvantaged. It was in one of their houses that Lord Charles Beresford coined the sobriquet ‘The Souls’, for the intellectual and aristocratic coterie amongst which they moved.
Provenance
Purchased with a grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) from Edward John Peregrine Cust, 7th Baron Brownlow, C. St J. (b.1936) in 1984
Credit line
Belton House, The Brownlow Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund by the National Trust in 1984)
Makers and roles
Sir Frank Owen Salisbury RA (Harpenden 1874 – 1962), artist