'Reflection': Girl with a Bunch of Grapes
Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (Plympton 1723 - London 1792)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1743 - 1792
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
776 x 640 mm
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486805
Caption
The inscription on the top of the stretcher of this picture identifies the sitter as Lady Sophia Hope, Countess of Haddington. However, no inventory or catalogue has ever identified her as such, and the coloured engraving, published by John Jeffreys in 1800, merely gives the picture the title ‘Simplicity.’ The identification with Reynolds’s niece, Mary Palmer, doubtless stems from the confusion of this ‘Simplicity’ with the more celebrated composition of this title (there is a version at Waddesdon Manor), which took her niece, and Reynolds’s grand-niece, Theophila Palmer, as its model. This is, therefore, a ‘fancy picture’, which is now sadly reduced to a wreck.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, 'Reflection': Girl with a Bunch of Grapes, by Sir Joshua Reynolds (Plympton 1723 - London 1792). Half-length portrait of a young girl, seated, full face, with a bunch of green grapes in her lap, her joined hands cut off below. She is wearing a white dress, with a dead leaf scarf on her right shoulder, and has auburn hair. The background is dark with a window in the right upper corner. Unframed.
Provenance
In the collection of the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) by the year of his death. Thence by descent, until the death in 1952 of the 3rd Lord Leconfield, who had given Petworth to the National Trust in 1947, and whose nephew and heir, John Wyndham, 6th Lord Leconfield and 1st Lord Egremont (1920-72) arranged for the acceptance of the major portion of the collections at Petworth in lieu of death duties (the first ever such arrangement) in 1956 by H.M.Treasury.
Credit line
Petworth House, The Egremont Collection (acquired in lieu of tax by HM Treasury in 1956 and subsequently transferred to the National Trust)
Marks and inscriptions
Inscribed on reverse: Lady Sophia Hope, Lady Haddington
Makers and roles
Sir Joshua Reynolds PRA (Plympton 1723 - London 1792), artist
References
Mannings 2000: David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings. The Subject Pictures catalogued by Martin Postle, New Haven & London 2000, no.2082, p.534 pl.1632