The Aston sisters: Lady Legard and Mrs Hedges as Flora and Ceres, their arms around one another, in white dresses and pink and green stoles, ears of wheat and flowers in their upswept powdered hair, one sister holding a basket of fruit and the other holding a pink rose; grapes, vine leaf and tree background

Details

SAMUEL SHELLEY (1750/56-1808)
The Aston sisters: Lady Legard and Mrs Hedges as Flora and Ceres, their arms around one another, in white dresses and pink and green stoles, ears of wheat and flowers in their upswept powdered hair, one sister holding a basket of fruit and the other holding a pink rose; grapes, vine leaf and tree background
indistinctly signed on the backing paper 'S [S]helley K[in]g Street [...] Covent G[a]rden.'
oval, 2 15/16 in. (75 mm.) wide, silver frame with old-mine cut diamond surround and pierced ribbon and bow cresting

Provenance

C. H. T. Hawkins, London.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 8 June 1987, lot 98.
With Karin Henninger-Tavcar, Pforzheim, catalogue 1988, no. 47/153, acquired by
Dr Anton C. R. Dreesmann (inventory no. F-173).

Literature

H. Blättel, International Dictionary. Miniature Painters [...], Munich, 1992, p. 1415, illustrated in colour p. 49.
K. Henninger-Tavcar, Miniaturporträts, Pforzheim, 1995, illustrated in colour p. 266.

Special notice

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.

Further details

(ILLUSTRATED ON PREVIOUS PAGE)

Lot Essay

The sitters were the daughters of Henry Aston of Aston, Cheshire; Jane (d. 1833) married Sir John Legard, 6th Bt., on 22 June 1782.
This portrait is after Richard Cosway's miniature; two versions of which were sold Christie's, London: 16 November 1976, lot 142 set in an enamelled gold snuff box by James Morisset, and 31 March 1981, lot 76.

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