Lady Mary Villiers, Duchess of Richmond (1622-1685)
studio of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (Antwerp 1599 - London 1641)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1640 - 1685
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
2130 x 1270 mm
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486172
Caption
The sitter was a goddaughter of James VI & I, who called her his “little grandchild”, dandled her on his lap, and let her play with his watch (which Charles I found and sent to her on the morning of his execution). She was the daughter of George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham. The Duke obtained a patent in 1627 granting his daughter the dignity of the rank of Duchess in the event of his dying without a male heir. This did not happen, as he had a son in 1628, and the coronet here is hers as Duchess of Lennox, wife of James Stuart, 4th Duke of Lennox & 1st Duke of Richmond. She is here shown in mourning, as his widow: in black, but with no widow’s peak, and with a fleur-de-lysé crown. The Duchess never seems to have had a portrait of herself painted from life after the death of Van Dyck.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Lady Mary Villiers, Duchess of Richmond (1622-1685), studio of Sir Anthony van Dyck, (1599-1641). A full-length portrait, standing, three-quarters left, wearing black and with a coronet on the parapet in the left background. On the right is a gold curtain.
Provenance
In the collection of the 3rd Earl of Egremont (1751-1837) by 1835. 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
Frances Howard / Widow to Lodowick Stuart / Duke of Richmond (inscribed with the name of the wrong sitter at bottom left)
Makers and roles
studio of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (Antwerp 1599 - London 1641), artist