Lot Essay
The sitter was Alice, daughter and co-heiress of Samuel Ibbetson of Denton Park, Yorkshire. She married Francis Vernon, of Orwell Park, Suffolk, who in 1762 became the 1st Earl of Shipbrook. A pastel of their son, Francis (1752-1760), is in the Frick Collection, New York (E. Mead Johnson, Francis Cotes, Oxford, 1876, no. 79).