Isabella Carr, Mrs John Hervey (1669/70-1693) or Elizabeth Felton, Countess of Bristol (1676-1741) or The Hon. Isabella Carr Hervey (1689-1711)
attributed to Michael Dahl (Stockholm 1659 - London 1743)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1705 - 1711
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1226 x 997 mm (48¼ x 39¼ in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 851707
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Isabella Carr, Mrs John Hervey (1669/70-1693) or Elizabeth Felton, Countess of Bristol (1676-1741) or perhaps The Hon. Isabella Carr Hervey (1689-1711), attributed to Michael Dahl (Stockholm 1656/9 – London 1743), inscribed: in black, on the plinth at the left: Isabella, wife of John Earl of Bristol, circa 1705-11. A three-quarter-length portrait of a young woman, turned slightly to the right, head turned to the left, gazing at the spectator, standing, wearing a pale mauve dress, loosely draped sleeves turned back over white frilled under-blouse; dark curly hair, brown eyes, her right hand resting on a stone pedestal with a still-life of grapes and peaches, left hand outstretched. Landscape background with very dark trees, blue sky and clouds to right.
Full description
The sitter has been variously identified as: Isabella Carr (1669/70-1693), first wife of John Hervey, later Earl of Bristol (married 1688) The Hon. Isabella Carr Hervey (1689-1711), the eldest surviving daughter of Isabella Carr and John Hervey Elizabeth Felton, Countess of Bristol (1676-1741), the second wife of John Hervey (married in 1695) The portrait's inscription identifies the sitter as Isabella Carr, who died in 1693. The Hervey family have long-since regarded the portrait as a likeness of her. This identification is somewhat at odds with the style of the portrait and the sitter's dress, which indicates an early eighteenth century date. If the sitter is Carr, she is being depicted posthumously and in contemporary dress for the time of painting. The inscription naming Carr as sitter was applied in or after 1714, when Hervey was first created Earl of Bristol. John Hervey's Expenses Book records the commission of several portraits of his first and second wives. The present portrait, given its plausible attribution to Dahl, may be the one recorded in December 1700, 'Paid Cotton for his Mr. Daula for my wife her 3/4 picture £10.15.', or the one recorded in May 1711, 'Paid Michael Dahl ye Swedish painter for dear wifes picture, £21.10.' (Hervey 1894, pp. 160-61). In his article 'A portrait of Isabella Carre' (Lincolnshire Past and Present 87, Spring 2012), Michael Thurland suggests that the present portrait may be an adaptation of an earlier 1690 or 1693 portrait of Isabella (payments for her portraits are recorded in September 1690 to Brook and in May 1693 to Henry Peart). The '3/4 picture' by 'Mr Daula', paid for in 1700, should also be considered. In this article it is further claimed that the phrase 'dear wife' was exclusively used to describe Isabella Carr (Thurland 2012, also citing Alastair Laing). However the phrase is later used to describe Elizabeth Felton, Hervey's second wife, in the Expenses Book entry for the 1709 group portrait by Charles d'Agar of Felton and her twins Lady Henrietta and Lord Charles Hervey (NT 851820); 'Paid Mr. Charles D'Agar for my dear wife her picture with ye twins, twenty two guineas.' (Hervey 1894, p. 161). The sitter bears some resemblance to Isabella Carr, whose likeness was captured in a documented portrait miniature by Peter Cross (NT 851866). Hervey continued to commission posthumous portraits and copies of portraits of his first wife well into the 18th century: February 1731 - 'Paid Mr Henry Peart for a picture of my most excellent first wife drawn soon after our marriage by his father 3 guineas.' (Hervey 1894, p. 163) January 1742 - 'Paid J. Fayram for the copy of my most dear 1st wife her picture, £3.13.6'. (Hervey 1894, p. 164) Returning to the present portrait, it seems unlikely that Hervey would have commissioned a posthumous portrait of his deceased first wife with peaches and grapes, fruits iconographically associated with abundance and fertility, whilst his second wife Elizabeth Felton was conceiving and delivering children almost every year from 1697 to 1716. Perhaps the simplest explanation, given the style of dress, the symbolism of the fruit still life, and the entry recording payment to Michael Dahl in May 1711, is that this is a portrait of Elizabeth Felton, the wife, in 1711, of John Hervey, and that the portrait was at some point erroneously inscribed as an image of Carr. Identifying inscriptions were often applied to portraits long after their production. Technical analysis could help determine whether this inscription is roughly contemporary (after 1714) or later. It has also been posited that the sitter is Isabella Carr Hervey (1689-1711), the eldest child of John Hervey and Isabella Carr and their only daughter to attain adulthood. Her illness and untimely death in November 1711 is recorded Hervey's Diary (p.55): 'Sunday, my most pious, wise & dutifull daughter, Mrs Isabella Carr Hervey fell sick of a feaver at Ickworth; of which she died ye xith of November following; & was interr’d at her most excellent mothers feet ye 15th after in Ickworth chancel.' While it is unusual that no payment for a ¾ length portrait of Isabella Carr Hervey is recorded in Hervey's Expenses Book, the sitter was nevertheless of the appropriate age and stage in her life to be depicted in this way. The available evidence suggests that this is most likely a portrait of one of John Hervey's wives - either a posthumous portrait of Isabella Carr or a portrait from life of Elizabeth Felton. The Hervey family believe it to be a portrait of the former. Indeed, in 1905 a twentieth-century copy of the present portrait was presented as a portrait of Isabella Carr to Carre's Grammar School (founded by one of Isabella's relations) by the 3rd Marquess of Bristol (see Thurland 2012). Hervey 1894: The diary of John Hervey, first Earl of Bristol : with extracts from his book of expenses, 1688 to 1742, with appendices and notes, with five illustrations, Wells 1894, pp. 159 - 164 (XI. Pictures & Tapestry). Thurland 2012: Michael Thurland, 'A portrait of Isabella Carre', Lincolnshire Past & Present (the journal for the Society of Lincolnshire History and Archaeology), 87, Spring 2012 pp. 3-5.
Provenance
Presumably commissioned by John, Baron Hervey, later 1st Earl of Bristol (1665-1751), and thence by descent to Frederick William, 5th Earl and 1st Marquess of Bristol (1769-1859), by whom noted in his handwritten list of paintings at Ickworth, c.1837, in the Breakfast Room: “4 Lady Hervey wife of Lord Hervey afterwards E. of Bristol”; thence by descent to Frederick, 3rd Marquess of Bristol (1834-1907), accepted by HM Treasury in lieu of tax and transferred to the National Trust in 1956.
Credit line
Ickworth, The Bristol Collection (acquired through the National Land Fund and transferred to The National Trust in 1956)
Makers and roles
attributed to Michael Dahl (Stockholm 1659 - London 1743), artist
References
Farrer 1908 Edmund Farrer, Portraits in Suffolk Houses (West), 1908, No. 79, p. 214 Nisser 1927 Wilhelm Nisser, Michael Dahl and the Contemporary Swedish School of Painting in England, Uppsala, 1927, no.21, catalogue section, p.7