.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
.jpg?w=1)
Lot Essay
This elegant portrait of Lady Eden was painted in circa 1775, one year after Gainsborough’s move to London from Bath, where he had lived for 15 years and established a distinguished reputation for his naturalistic and inventive portraits. The artist moved to the capital to expand his practice and client base beyond the West Country, in an increasingly London-centric art world. Soon after his arrival, Gainsborough sealed his reputation in the city, exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1777 for the first time in five years to acclaim, where one visitor described the artist ‘as one of the first portrait-painters in the Kingdom. He is inferior to none in the most essential requisites of his art, but perhaps he is superior to all others in the ease and richness of his drapery’ (London Chronicle, 24-26 April 1777, p. 396). The seven pictures he exhibited included full-length portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland (1777; Royal Collection) and Mary Graham (1775; Edinburgh, National Gallery of Scotland), one of Gainsborough’s most renowned paintings, completed in the same period as Lady Eden.
Lady Eden looks up from her book, holding a page with her left hand as if she has just been interrupted. She makes direct eye contact with the viewer, and her lips are raised in a slight smile, creating the impression of familiarity with her audience. Gainsborough pays characteristic attention to her dress. He treats the costume with painterly bravura; the folds in the chemise and lilac dress are suggested using only a few confident strokes, whilst the dabbed gold highlights of the fringing on her shawl lend it a glimmering effect. Lady Eden’s partially powdered hair is worn high, as was fashionable in the mid-1770s.
Gainsborough effortlessly combined contemporary dress with a composition steeped in the tradition of 17th-century painting. The artist is known to have started copying Old Masters during his time in Bath in the 1760s, when he had access to renowned pictures at Wilton House, Corsham Court and Longford Castle, and continued the practice after his move to London, where he was able to study equally notable collections. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gainsborough did not travel abroad, and so these collections were his principal portal to the art of the past. He was particularly influenced by Sir Anthony van Dyck, from whom he absorbed many lessons in grand figural compositions and the handling of drapery. Gainsborough collected works by the artist, and made copies after his work, including a small-scale copy of the Wilton group portrait, The Pembroke Family, and a life-size copy of Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart from Cobham Hall, Kent. The practice served as a commercial tool, advertising his skill and suggesting a direct lineage between his own work and his predecessors. It was also a key function of Gainsborough’s artistic development, as a means of learning from the subject matter and technique of other great artists. Van Dyck’s influence is sometimes translated literally into Gainsborough’s works, with the appearance of ‘Van Dyck dress’, and elsewhere, as in the present work, the overall design appears to have been subtly informed by his study of the artist. The swag of red drapery in the background and shawl draped around her shoulders are staging devices van Dyck frequently used, whilst her pose, with delicately crossed arms and long, spread fingers, appears frequently in his female portraits. A portrait of Henrietta Maria by van Dyck which may have been at Longford Castle when Gainsborough visited has a very similar arrangement. Although in the case of van Dyck’s portraiture this has sometimes been interpreted as a protective or defensive gesture, in the portrait of Lady Eden, it emphasises her grace and elegance.
Dorothea was the only surviving child of Dorothy and Peter Johnson, Recorder of York from 1759 to 1789. Their family home in the city, Castlegate House, was commissioned by Peter and designed by John Carr, the leading architect working in the North of England, who was also responsible for many public buildings in Doncaster, Lincoln and Nottingham, and country houses including Harewood House and extensions to Wentworth Woodhouse. In 1767 Dorothea married Sir John Eden, 4th Bt., of Windlestone Hall, Durham and they had 8 children together. Eden was Mayor of Hartlepool in 1775 and 1786, and the MP for Durham County from 1774 until he lost his seat in 1790, when even his brother was said to have opposed his re-election because of his support of Lord North. Their descendant, Anthony Eden, served as Prime Minister between 1955 and 1957.
This is one of two autograph versions of Gainsborough’s portrait of Lady Eden; the other, made around the same date for the sitter’s father, was probably painted first, and from life (Belsey, op. cit., no. 204). The provenances of the two pictures have historically been confused. The present picture was commissioned by Lady Eden’s husband and presumably sold from the family in the late nineteenth century. An illustration in the catalogue of the 1896 Goldsmid sale at Christie's confirms that the early Agnew's, Price and Goldsmid provenance, previously erroneously given to the other version, in fact pertains to this portrait. The two versions can be differentiated by small variations in the detail of the costume and the colouring. Gainsborough also painted two versions of a portrait of Lady Eden’s husband, Sir John (fig. 1), probably completed nearly 10 years earlier at the time of their marriage in 1767 (Belsey, op. cit., nos. 302 and 303). Although both were commissioned by Lady Eden’s father and by Sir John himself, the feigned oval and the left-facing pose suggest that they were not intended as pendants.
The picture must have been reframed in 1928 by the Duveen Brothers. It is a 'heart corner frame', or the '3rd type' of the standard frames that the dealers offered, and is typical of their reframing of British portraits in exquisitely carved, ornate frames that replicate eighteenth-century French examples (see N. Penny and K. Serres, 'Duveen's French Frames for British Pictures', The Burlington Magazine, CLI, June 2009, pp. 388-394).
Lady Eden looks up from her book, holding a page with her left hand as if she has just been interrupted. She makes direct eye contact with the viewer, and her lips are raised in a slight smile, creating the impression of familiarity with her audience. Gainsborough pays characteristic attention to her dress. He treats the costume with painterly bravura; the folds in the chemise and lilac dress are suggested using only a few confident strokes, whilst the dabbed gold highlights of the fringing on her shawl lend it a glimmering effect. Lady Eden’s partially powdered hair is worn high, as was fashionable in the mid-1770s.
Gainsborough effortlessly combined contemporary dress with a composition steeped in the tradition of 17th-century painting. The artist is known to have started copying Old Masters during his time in Bath in the 1760s, when he had access to renowned pictures at Wilton House, Corsham Court and Longford Castle, and continued the practice after his move to London, where he was able to study equally notable collections. Unlike many of his contemporaries, Gainsborough did not travel abroad, and so these collections were his principal portal to the art of the past. He was particularly influenced by Sir Anthony van Dyck, from whom he absorbed many lessons in grand figural compositions and the handling of drapery. Gainsborough collected works by the artist, and made copies after his work, including a small-scale copy of the Wilton group portrait, The Pembroke Family, and a life-size copy of Lord John and Lord Bernard Stuart from Cobham Hall, Kent. The practice served as a commercial tool, advertising his skill and suggesting a direct lineage between his own work and his predecessors. It was also a key function of Gainsborough’s artistic development, as a means of learning from the subject matter and technique of other great artists. Van Dyck’s influence is sometimes translated literally into Gainsborough’s works, with the appearance of ‘Van Dyck dress’, and elsewhere, as in the present work, the overall design appears to have been subtly informed by his study of the artist. The swag of red drapery in the background and shawl draped around her shoulders are staging devices van Dyck frequently used, whilst her pose, with delicately crossed arms and long, spread fingers, appears frequently in his female portraits. A portrait of Henrietta Maria by van Dyck which may have been at Longford Castle when Gainsborough visited has a very similar arrangement. Although in the case of van Dyck’s portraiture this has sometimes been interpreted as a protective or defensive gesture, in the portrait of Lady Eden, it emphasises her grace and elegance.
Dorothea was the only surviving child of Dorothy and Peter Johnson, Recorder of York from 1759 to 1789. Their family home in the city, Castlegate House, was commissioned by Peter and designed by John Carr, the leading architect working in the North of England, who was also responsible for many public buildings in Doncaster, Lincoln and Nottingham, and country houses including Harewood House and extensions to Wentworth Woodhouse. In 1767 Dorothea married Sir John Eden, 4th Bt., of Windlestone Hall, Durham and they had 8 children together. Eden was Mayor of Hartlepool in 1775 and 1786, and the MP for Durham County from 1774 until he lost his seat in 1790, when even his brother was said to have opposed his re-election because of his support of Lord North. Their descendant, Anthony Eden, served as Prime Minister between 1955 and 1957.
This is one of two autograph versions of Gainsborough’s portrait of Lady Eden; the other, made around the same date for the sitter’s father, was probably painted first, and from life (Belsey, op. cit., no. 204). The provenances of the two pictures have historically been confused. The present picture was commissioned by Lady Eden’s husband and presumably sold from the family in the late nineteenth century. An illustration in the catalogue of the 1896 Goldsmid sale at Christie's confirms that the early Agnew's, Price and Goldsmid provenance, previously erroneously given to the other version, in fact pertains to this portrait. The two versions can be differentiated by small variations in the detail of the costume and the colouring. Gainsborough also painted two versions of a portrait of Lady Eden’s husband, Sir John (fig. 1), probably completed nearly 10 years earlier at the time of their marriage in 1767 (Belsey, op. cit., nos. 302 and 303). Although both were commissioned by Lady Eden’s father and by Sir John himself, the feigned oval and the left-facing pose suggest that they were not intended as pendants.
The picture must have been reframed in 1928 by the Duveen Brothers. It is a 'heart corner frame', or the '3rd type' of the standard frames that the dealers offered, and is typical of their reframing of British portraits in exquisitely carved, ornate frames that replicate eighteenth-century French examples (see N. Penny and K. Serres, 'Duveen's French Frames for British Pictures', The Burlington Magazine, CLI, June 2009, pp. 388-394).