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PROPERTY FROM THE ESTATE OF MARY, VISCOUNTESS ECCLES (LOTS 1-5) Mary, Viscountess Eccles (1912-2003) was a world-renowned bibliophile, described in an obituary as 'one of the great American collectors of the last century, combining wealth, scholarship, and sensibility in a way that became rare to the point of extinction in her lifetime' (Daily Telegraph, 29 August 2003). Over a fruitful and dedicated sixty years of collecting, Lady Eccles assembled at Four Oaks Farm in Somerville, New Jersey, an exceptional private library. While this is justly celebrated and was undoubtedly her principal focus of interest, Lady Eccles also collected eighteenth-century British pictures, some of which are offered in this sale, as well as that of British Pictures 1500-1850 to be held at King Street on 11 June 2004.

Arthur Devis (1712-1787)

Portrait of Thomas Bateman Lane (b. 1735), small full-length, in a grey suit with a blue waistcoat, holding a tricorn in his left hand, leaning on a tree stump, in a river landscape with the sea beyond

Details

Arthur Devis (1712-1787)
Portrait of Thomas Bateman Lane (b. 1735), small full-length, in a grey suit with a blue waistcoat, holding a tricorn in his left hand, leaning on a tree stump, in a river landscape with the sea beyond
signed and dated 'Art. Devis. fe. 1755' (lower right)
oil on canvas
23¾ x 16½ in. (60.3 x 41.9 cm.)

Provenance

By descent to the sitter's daughter, Mary, who married Thomas Fector.
Probably in the Fector sale, Bunny Hall, Dover, 1877.
Anonymous sale; Sotheby's, London, 15 May 1957, lot 177 (£1,100 to Agnews).
with Agnews, London, from whom purchased by Mrs Donald Hyde (later Mary, Viscountess Eccles) in 1959.

Literature

E. Waterhouse, The Dictionary of British 18th Century Painters in oils and crayons, Woodbridge, 1981, p. 108 (illustrated).

Exhibited

Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and His Contemporaries, 1 October - 30 November 1980, no. 32.

Special notice

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium

Lot Essay

The sitter appears to have been from a Kentish family, although perhaps of Northumbrian origin (see E. D'Oench, catalogue to the exhibition, Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut, The Conversation Piece: Arthur Devis and His Contemporaries, 1980, p. 60). The son of William Lane and Frances Bateman, he married Mary Stringer at St. Mary's, Dover, on 31 October 1758, and their daughter, Frances, married James Fector at St. James's, Dover in 1783 (Ellen D'Oench, op. cit, records a suggestion that the sitter's daughter was called Mary and married a Thomas Fector). It is through the Fector family that the picture is believed to have passed until 1877. Portraits by Devis of three Lane sisters, each dated 1742, are also known.

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