Allan Ramsay (1713-1784)

Portrait of a Lady, probably Elizabeth Morice, Mrs Humphry Hale, three-quarter-length, in an oyster-satin dress and a blue cloak, beside a fountain, in a landscape

Details

Allan Ramsay (1713-1784)
Portrait of a Lady, probably Elizabeth Morice, Mrs Humphry Hale, three-quarter-length, in an oyster-satin dress and a blue cloak, beside a fountain, in a landscape
signed 'A.Ramsay' (lower left)
oil on canvas
50 x 40 in. (127 x 101.6 cm.)

Provenance

By descent in the Hale family; Christie's London, 31 March 1922, lot 16, as of 'Charlotte Hale, afterwards first Countess of Onslow' (105 gns. to Hale).
with Frost & Reed, Bristol, by 1928.
H.E. Garle; Sotheby's London, 27 November 1929, lot 81 (unsold).
H.C. Garle; Christie's London, 20 June 1930, lot 88 (unsold at 105 gns.).
Crutchley sale; Sotheby's London, 24 June 1931, lot 103 (sold to Cochran).
F.G. Bonham Carter; Christie's London, 23 July 1937, lot 93 (95 gns. to Thomson).
with Doig, Wilson & Wheatley, Edinburgh.
Purchased by H.N. Mitchell after 1937, and by descent to the vendor.

Literature

To be included in the forthcoming catalogue raisonn of the paintings of Allan Ramsay, by Alistair Smart, edited by John Ingamells, as no. 229, fig. 284).

Lot Essay

The sitter is believed to be Elizabeth, daughter of Humphry Morice of Chiswick, a Member of Parliament (1713-1717), and a Director of the Bank of England. In 1742 she married Paggen Hale, second son of William Hale of King's Walden, who represented Hertfordshire in Parliament between 1747 and 1755. The traditional identification of the sitter as Charlotte (c.1752-1819), daughter of William Hale, who married the 2nd Earl of Onslow, may be discounted on grounds of age.

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