Queen Mary (of Modena) as Duchess of York (1658-1718)
Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1679 (inscribed)
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2083 x 1365 mm (82 x 53 ¾ in)
Order this imageCollection
Kedleston Hall, Derbyshire
NT 108818
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Queen Mary (of Modena) as Duchess of York (1658-1718) by Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680) and Studio, inscribed below left, in yellow script (along with that on KED/P/102, this was applied slightly later than the others in the collection): Dutchess of York/1679. A full-length portrait of a young woman, seated by a Bushey fountain, holding a red flower to her breast with her right hand and holding a basket of flowers on her lap with her left hand, wearing a grey décolleté dress with blue mantle. Red curtain in right background and silhouetted dusky fountain and landscape on the left. The second wife of James II, whose production of an heir precipitated the Glorious Revolution. Acquired at Sir William Stanhope's sale in 1733, but not originally associated with the Garter portrait of the Duke of York, as their poses, inscriptions and dates make clear, but rather with that of the Duke of Ormonde. Already in the State Bedroom in 1769.
Provenance
Philip, 4th Lord Wharton, (1613-1696) Winchendon; thence, by descent to Philip, Duke of Wharton (1698-1731), by whom – or by whose executors – either sold (in the latter case, with the rest of his collection) to Sir Robert Walpole, or to directly Sir William Stanhope, whose seat, Eythrope, was next door to Wooburn (the Whartons’ other seat); acquired by Sir Nathaniel Curzon, 4th Bt (1676-1758) at Sir William Stanhope's sale (Albemarle Street), 28th April 1733, lot 26; possibly at Curzon’s house in Brook Street, and moved to Kedleston, c.1740, where recorded in the Dressing Room 1769; thence by descent until bought with part of the contents of Kedleston with the aid of the National Heritage Memorial Fund in 1987 when the house and park were given to the National Trust by Francis Curzon, 3rd Viscount Scarsdale (1924-2000)
Credit line
Kedleston Hall, The Scarsdale Collection (acquired with the help of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and transferred to the National Trust in 1987)
Marks and inscriptions
Duchess of York 1679 (mark, painted, bottom lhs of canvas, gold text)
Makers and roles
Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680), artist
References
Millar 1994 Sir Oliver Millar, “Philip, Lord Wharton, and his collection of portraits”, Burlington Magazine, no.1097, August, 1994, pp.517-530, pp.520-21, 523-4 & 530, no.28