Sisters

This magnificent portrait was one of the most prestigious commissions of its age. It was painted in 1875 to celebrate the engagement of the central figure, Margaret Smith, to Alfred Fitzroy, successively titled Earl of Euston in 1912, and 8th Duke of Grafton in 1918. She is being congratulated by her married sister, Gertrude, to the right. She married Major General Alexander Stewart in 1872, and in 1875 had given birth to a daughter, Kathleen. Their seated sister, Virginia, would marry the Hon. Francis Hyde Villiers, youngest son of the 4th Earl of Clarendon, the following year. He had a distinguished career as a diplomat, culminating as Ambassador to war-torn Belgium in 1919.
The sisters were the daughters of Eric Carrington Smith (1828-1906), senior partner of the banking firm of Smith, Payne & Smiths which was founded in 1758. The picture hung at his seat, Ashfold House, Handcross, West Sussex, from where it is now being sold. The distinctive chalk escarpments of the South Downs can be seen in the background.
The triple portrait echoes Millais’s triumph at the Royal Academy of 1872, Hearts are Trumps (Tate, London), in which the daughters of the collector Walter Armstrong play cards, alluding to their race to marry first, and advantageously. That portrait in turn paid homage to the celebrated triple portrait by Reynolds of The Ladies Waldegrave (Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh). The phenomenon of the triple portrait continued: Charles Perugini’s The Ramparts, Walmer Caste: Portraits of the Countess Granville and the Ladies Victoria and Mary Leveson-Gower was shown at the Royal Academy in 1891, and was sold at Christie’s, London, 15 June 2011, lot 30 (£169,250).
The artist chosen to record these illustrious marriages was Valentine Prinsep, who was well connected in both artistic and social circles. His mother was one of the celebrated Pattle sisters noted for their wit, beauty and trenchant views. One of his aunts, Countess Somers, lived at Eastnor Castle, Herefordshire, which had recently been embellished by Pugin, while another was the pioneering photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, a neighbour of Tennyson’s at Farringford on the Isle of White. Sarah Prinsep, Valentine’s mother, presided over a rarified literary and artistic milieu at Little Holland House in Kensington. Her 'genius in residence' was George Frederic Watts, who lived with the family for the best part of two decades, but her neighbours, who called regularly, included Millais, Leighton and Burne-Jones. Prinsep’s first major artistic commission came in 1857 when he was invited by Rossetti to join him in painting murals for the debating chamber of the Oxford Union. Thereafter he continued his studies under Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he was fellow students with Whistler and Poynter. He was immortalised as 'Taffy' in George du Maurier’s fictional reminiscences of that time entitled Trilby. He started exhibiting at the Royal Academy in 1862, and was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1880, becoming a full Academician in 1894.
Prinsep’s fortune was assured when he married Florence, daughter of Frederick Leyland, in 1894. Leyland was a Liverpool shipping magnate who formed one of the most important collections of Pre-Raphaelite art ever assembled. Prinsep himself formed a notable collection of blue and white china, some of which can be seen on the table here.
An extremely popular figure, who Leighton asked to become his executor, Prinsep was widely mourned by fellow artists. George Dunlop Leslie recalled him thus: 'Prinsep was a thorough artist: his pictures always showed originality in their conception, and their execution was manly and vigorous. He possessed a fine natural sense of colour' and 'was entirely devoid of affectation of any sort'.