Called (but not) Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart, Duchess of Lauderdale (1626-1698), just possibly Lady Dorothy Sydney, Countess of Sunderland (1618-1684), or Mrs John Greenhill
Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1657 - 1659
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1245 x 1000 mm
Order this imageCollection
Petworth House and Park, West Sussex
NT 486189
Caption
The supposed identity of this sitter was informed by an inscription on a version at Penshurst. If it is not her, it is hard to say who she might be, with no other portrait of the same sitter to act as a touchstone. The fact that one version is at Petworth - evidently inspired by Northumberland’s Van Dycks - and others at Penshurst and Althorp, strongly suggests that she had Percy, Sidney, and Spencer connections. The obvious candidate - and one whose age, what is more, would agree with the somewhat matronly appearance of the sitter - is Lady Dorothy Sydney, Countess of Sunderland (1617-1684), painted perhaps in 1652, when the carnation would signify her remarriage, to Robert Smythe. It does not seem impossible that this should be the same sitter as in the Van Dyck of the Countess of Sunderland, also at Petworth, some thirteen years on, at the age of thirty-five.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Called (but not) Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart, Duchess of Lauderdale (1626-1698), just possibly Lady Dorothy Sydney, Countess of Sunderland (1618-1684), or Mrs John Greenhill, late 1650s. A three-quarter-length portrait of a young woman, seated, head three-quarters left and wearing a pale fawn dress with a brown-rose mantle and holding a scarlet carnation in her left hand, on her lap; the background is dark with a pillar to the left.
Provenance
In the collection at Petworth by 1785; 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 HM 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)
Makers and roles
Sir Peter Lely (Soest 1618 – London 1680), artist