Lot Essay
The sitters were the daughters of Francis, 2nd Earl of Godolphin (1678-1766), and his wife Lady Henrietta Churchill (1681-1722), daughter of John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough. Henrietta (d. 1776) married the statesman and Prime Minister Thomas Pelham-Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle. Like her husband she was a devoted Whig. Her younger sister Mary, who was actually the illegitimate child of the famous playwright, William Congreve, was raised by the 2nd Earl of Godolphin as his own and was his eventual sole heiress, marrying Thomas Osborne, 4th Duke of Leeds in 1740.