Portrait of Rachel Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire (1674-1725), three-quarter-length, seated, in a white dress with a red shawl, beside a column

The sitter was the daughter of William, Lord Russell (1639-1683) and his wife Lady Rachel, daughter and eventual heir of Thomas Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton and widow of Lord Vaughan. Her brother Wriothesley succeeded as the 2nd Duke of Bedford on the death of his grandfather William, 1st Duke of Bedford, in 1700. Her sister Catherine, married John, 2nd Duke of Rutland in 1693. She married, in June 1688, William, 2nd Duke of Devonshire (1672-1729), and her son William succeeded as the 3rd Duke of Devonshire on his father's death. A full-length portrait of the sitter together with her sister Catherine, by Sir Godfrey Kneller, dated 1686, is in the Collection of the Marquis of Tavistock and Trustees of the Bedford Estates at Woburn, and another, half-length, of circa 1690, is in the Collection of the National Trust at Hardwick Hall (see J. Douglas Stewart, Sir Godfrey Kneller and the English Baroque Portrait, Oxford, 1983, nos. 220 and 221, the former illustrated pl.31). Kneller also painted a bust-length portrait of her husband, circa 1680-1683, which is also at Woburn (see J.Douglas Stewart, op. cit, no.632).