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Lot Essay
This dignified portrait of Sir Richard Lee was commissioned in the 1590s for Ditchley Park by the sitter’s half-brother, Sir Henry Lee, champion to Queen Elizabeth I and Master of Armouries. Lee’s patronage of Marcus Gheeraerts was extensive and produced many of the defining images of the Tudor court, including ‘The Ditchley Portrait’ of Elizabeth I (London, National Portrait Gallery, inv. no. 2561). The present painting formed part of a set of five family portraits of Henry and his brothers Robert, Thomas, Cromwell and Richard, which all passed by descent at Ditchley Park until Viscount Dillon’s sale in 1933. More recently three of them were published by Roy Strong (op. cit., 2019, pp. 184-185). The similar dimensions, three-quarter-length format, poses and costumes suggest that the group may have been intended to hang together in a dynastic scheme.
The illegitimate son of Sir Anthony Lee and Ann Hassall, Richard was born whilst his father was still married to Margaret Wyatt. Little is known of Lee’s early life. He married twice, in both cases to wealthy widows; the first, to Lady Mary Croker, resulted in a lengthy dispute over the inheritance of two manors at Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, which Lee seems to have ultimately lost. His second marriage to Alice Kempe (d. 1592), the widow of Sir James Hales, provided the manor known as the ‘Dungeon’ in Canterbury, where he played an active role in the life of the city as a councilman.
In the late 1590s, the Muscovy Company initiated a diplomatic mission to Russia to advance English trading interests. Some intervention from Richard’s brother, Sir Henry Lee, and Sir Edward Wotton, appears to have persuaded Queen Elizabeth I to appoint Richard as Ambassador. In June 1600, he appeared at court to be knighted and received his instructions to secure better trading conditions for English merchants and to intervene in a potential marriage between an Austrian Archduke and the Tsar’s daughter, instead proposing an English match. Both diplomatic missions failed, and the trip led to personal downfall for Lee, who wasn’t reimbursed by either the Muscovy Company or the Queen and remained in debt until his death in 1608.
We are grateful to Professor Karen Hearn for her thoughts on this portrait.
The illegitimate son of Sir Anthony Lee and Ann Hassall, Richard was born whilst his father was still married to Margaret Wyatt. Little is known of Lee’s early life. He married twice, in both cases to wealthy widows; the first, to Lady Mary Croker, resulted in a lengthy dispute over the inheritance of two manors at Hook Norton, Oxfordshire, which Lee seems to have ultimately lost. His second marriage to Alice Kempe (d. 1592), the widow of Sir James Hales, provided the manor known as the ‘Dungeon’ in Canterbury, where he played an active role in the life of the city as a councilman.
In the late 1590s, the Muscovy Company initiated a diplomatic mission to Russia to advance English trading interests. Some intervention from Richard’s brother, Sir Henry Lee, and Sir Edward Wotton, appears to have persuaded Queen Elizabeth I to appoint Richard as Ambassador. In June 1600, he appeared at court to be knighted and received his instructions to secure better trading conditions for English merchants and to intervene in a potential marriage between an Austrian Archduke and the Tsar’s daughter, instead proposing an English match. Both diplomatic missions failed, and the trip led to personal downfall for Lee, who wasn’t reimbursed by either the Muscovy Company or the Queen and remained in debt until his death in 1608.
We are grateful to Professor Karen Hearn for her thoughts on this portrait.