Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (Plympton, Devon 1723-1792 London)

Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Edwards Freeman (1758-1782), three-quarter-length, in a white satin gown with a pink wrap, seated on a sofa in an interior

Details

Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A. (Plympton, Devon 1723-1792 London)
Portrait of Mrs. Thomas Edwards Freeman (1758-1782), three-quarter-length, in a white satin gown with a pink wrap, seated on a sofa in an interior
oil on canvas
49 7/8 x 40 in. (126.7 x 101.6 cm.)

Provenance

By inheritance from the sitter's husband John Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale (1748-1830), Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1830, to
Algernon, Baron Redesdale (d.1916), by whose executors sold in the Batsford Park Sale, Bruton, Knowles & Co., 30 April 1919, lot 581 (bt. Tooth for 14,800gns.)
Horace Harding Estate, New York, 1941.
Therese Lownes Noble, 1974.
Sotheby Parke Bernet, New York, 18 June 1974, lot 38.
Roger Whittaker, Cubberly House, Nr. Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire; Sotheby's, London, 24 November 1999, lot 157 (£140,000).

Literature

A. Graves and W.V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, I, London, 1899, pp. 339-40.
E.K. Waterhouse, Reynolds, London, 1941, no. 69.
D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, New Haven and London, 2000, pp. 206-7, no. 690.

Exhibited

London, Royal Academy, Old Masters, 1889, no. 140.
London, 45 Park Lane, Loan Exhibition of works by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1937, no. 9, ill. pl. 40.
Dallas Museum of Fine Arts, British Portraits of the 18th Century, 1938, no. 22.
San Francisco, The California Palace of the Legion of Honour, Seven Centuries of Paintings, 1939, no. L. 98.
London, Leger Galleries, English 18th-Century Conversation Pieces, Portraits and Landscapes, 1975, no. 20.

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Lot Essay

The sitter, who was the daughter of John Curtis of Butcombe, Somerset, married Thomas Edwards Freeman, only son of Thomas Edwards Freeman of Batsford Park, Gloucestershire. Her husband was Member of Parliament for Steyning in Sussex. Mannings suggests that that the picture is likely to have been painted circa 1778 on the basis of the sitter's hairstyle and costume (op.cit.).

On his death in 1808 Thomas Edwards Freeman bequeathed Batsford Park and its contents to John Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale (1748-1830) who was married to his relative Lady Frances Perceval (1717-1817), the seventh daughter of John Perceval, 2nd Earl of Egmont, and sister of Spenser Perceval, who was Prime Minister from 1809 to 1812. Redesdale, who was Attorney-General (1799-1801), Lord Chancellor of Ireland (1802-6) and Speaker of the House of Commons (1801-2) took the additional name and arms of Freeman by Royal licence the year following this inheritance.

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