Portrait of Frances Hanford (c.1631-1697), wife of Walter Hanford of Woollas Hall, Worcestershire, bust-length, in a white dress with pearls, feigned oval

Details

W. Baylis (fl.1659-60)
Portrait of Frances Hanford (c.1631-1697), wife of Walter Hanford of Woollas Hall, Worcestershire, bust-length, in a white dress with pearls, feigned oval
signed and dated 'W. Baylis. pinxit/.1660.' (upper left)
oil on canvas
29½ x 24½ in. (74.9 x 62.2 cm.)

Provenance

By descent in the family of the sitter until 1949
Mr. Hanford, Woollas Hall; Jackson-Stops and Staff, Cirencester, lot 96, as 'Mrs Whittington, sister of John Hanford, builder of Woollas Hall...School of Vandyck' (sold to M.S. Crabbe).
Anon. sale, Christie's, New York, 15 June 1977, lot 223, as 'Portrait of a Lady said to be Dorothy, wife of Captain Walter Thursby, and the daughter of the Reverend W.Piggott, rector of Egmond, half-length, in a grey dress' (sold $650).

Literature

M.J.H. Liversidge and W. Nelson-Cave, 'W. Baylis: a seventeenth century English Painter identified', The Burlington Magazine, October 1986, pp. 728-730, fig. 16.
E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of 16th and 17th Century British Painters, Woodbridge, 1988, p. 20.

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.

Lot Essay

The sitter, daughter of Sir Henry Compton, of Brambletye in Sussex, married Walter Hanford, of Woollas Hall, in Worcestershire, in 1651. The Hanford estate was sequestered for recusancy in 1658, but recovered at the Restoration in 1660, the date when Baylis executed the portraits of Frances Hanford and the now missing pendant of her husband. Little is known about Baylis whose style is reminiscent of Robert Walker (fl.1641- c.1658). However, through their study of the four portraits that Baylis is known to have painted, Michael Liversidge and Wendy Nelson-Cave, have concluded that Baylis may have been an intinerant painter who worked chiefly in the provinces for patrons who were Royal sympathisers of the lesser landed gentry.

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