JOHN HOPPNER, R.A. (London 1758-1810)

Portrait of Lady Boothby, three-quarter length, in a grey dress and with a plume in her hair, a landscape beyond

Details

JOHN HOPPNER, R.A. (London 1758-1810)
Portrait of Lady Boothby, three-quarter length, in a grey dress and with a plume in her hair, a landscape beyond
oil on canvas
50 x 40in. (127 x 101.5cm.)

Provenance

By descent from the sitter to her daughter Lady Elizabeth Levinge, who married Sir Richard Levinge, 6th Bt. (1765-1848), and by descent to
Sir Richard Levinge, 10th Bt., Bunny Park; sale, Bradwell's, 22-25 February 1910, lot 901, where purchased by Thos. Agnews, London.
J.N. Willys, Toledo, Ohio, 1920.
The New York Medical College, New York; sale, William Doyle, New York, 24 January 1996, lot 81.

Literature

W. Roberts, The Masterpieces of Hoppner, London, 1912, p. 29.
W. McKay and W. Roberts, Supplement and Index to John Hoppner, R.A., London, 1914, p. 41.
M. W. Brockwell, A Catalogue of the Paintings in the Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, New York, 1920, pp. 133-40.
R. K. Meyer, The Taft Museum: Its History and Collections, Hudson Hills, 1955, I, p. 190.
J.H. Wilson, The Life and Work of John Hoppner (1758-1810), unpublished PhD dissertation, New York University, 1992, p. 180.

Engraved

Norman Hirst, 1911.

Lot Essay

The sitter was the daughter of Sir William James, Bt., of Park Farm Place, Eltham, Kent, and his wife Anne Goddard. On 16 December 1783, she married Thomas Boothby Parkyns, Bt. (later Lord Rancliffe) of Bunny Park, Nottinghamshire. Her husband was M.P. for Stockbridge (1784-1790) and Leicester (1790-1800). She was the godmother to Henry Parkyns Hoppner, John Hoppner's youngest child.

Another version of Lady Boothby by Hoppner is in the Taft Museum, Cincinnati. There she is wearing a black lace shawl and is slightly older. It is from that painting that Wilkin based his engraving of 1795. The present painting was engraved in mezzotint by Norman Hirst in 1911.

We are grateful to Dr. John H. Wilson for his help in cataloguing this lot.

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