Lady Louisa Caroline Isabella Hervey, Lady Smyth (1715-1770)
Charles Jervas (Dublin 1675 – London 1739)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
circa 1733
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1213 x 991 mm (47 ¾ x 39 in)
Place of origin
England
Order this imageCollection
Ickworth, Suffolk
NT 851737
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Lady Louisa Caroline Isabella Hervey, Lady Smyth (1715-1770) by Charles Jervas (Dublin 1675 – London 1739), circa 1733. A three-quarter-length portrait of a young woman, standing in a landscape, facing, gazing at the spectator, wearing a white satin dress with elbow-length sleeves, a blue ribbon tied at the centre of her bodice, a filigree gilt and metal belt around waist, her right hand holds the rim of her straw hat on her head, a basket of garden flowers over her left wrist; long dark grey hair; landscape background, including a tree bending in the wind, with two collapses branches low down on it. She was the seventh daughter of John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol (1665-1751), and the fifth by his second wife, Elizabeth Felton (1676-1741). On 23 September 1731, she married, at Ickworth, Sir Robert Smyth, 2nd Bt. (c.1709-1783) of Isfield, Sussex and had one son and one daughter. Her son, Captain Hervey Smyth, 3rd Bt (1734-1811) was a page of honour to George II, and, as A.D.C. to General Wolfe, was present at the latter’s death in 1759 at Quebec. He is depicted in Benjamin West’s Death of General Wolfe (version at Ickworth: ICK.P.87). The daughter, Anne Mirabella [after her grandmother, the daughter of Sir Robert Legard] Henrietta, born in 1738, married in 1761 William Beale Brand, of Polstead Hall, Suffolk.
Provenance
Apparently painted by the artist, either for his own satisfaction, or for his client, but never delivered, if this is, as it seems reasonable to suppose, the portrait bought from the artist’s widow by the 1st Earl of Bristol in 1740 (cf. Diary, section XI, p.164, under January 25th: “Paid William Waters by the order & for the use of Mrs. Penelope Jarvis, executrix to her husband Charles Jarvis, in full for my daughter Louisa’s picture, £13.13.0.”); thence by descent to Frederick William, 4th Marquess of Bristol (1863–1951); after which accepted in lieu of tax by HM Treasury, along with Ickworth and the rest of its contents, 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
Charles Jervas (Dublin 1675 – London 1739), artist
References
Farrer 1908 Edmund Farrer, Portraits in Suffolk Houses (West), 1908, no. 145 Nisser 1927 Wilhelm Nisser, Michael Dahl and the Contemporary Swedish School of Painting in England, Uppsala, 1927, no.133, p.41 Collins Baker 1912 C. H. Collins Baker, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, London, 1912, vol.II, p.180, no.66