Lot Essay
The present portrait of Georgina Cartaret, Lady Spencer, can be compared to the full-length portrait of the same sitter, also by Vanderbank, and also painted in 1737, at Althorp (for which see K.J. Garlick, A Catalogue of Pictures at Althorp, The Walpole Society, XLV, 1976, p.84, no.650). In both pictures the sitter wears the same bejewelled white satin dress, and pearls in her hair. In the Althorp portrait, she leans against a plinth with a sculpted urn in a landscape.