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拍品专文
Executed in 1817, this portrait of Marianne, later Marchioness of Wellesley, is an exceptionally fine example of Lawrence’s drawings in chalk on prepared canvas. The artist started to employ this technique in the first decade of the 1800s before returning to it as he began work on what proved to be a career-defining commission: the series of portraits of the allied leaders who had defeated Napoleon, painted for the Prince Regent, later King George IV, and eventually hung in the Waterloo Chamber at Windsor Castle. This commission secured Lawrence’s fame throughout Europe and his reputation as the finest portraitist of his generation. The present drawing also constitutes an intriguing document in the context of the sitter’s intimate relationship with her husband’s brother, the Duke of Wellington, whose victory at Waterloo in 1815 signalled the end of the Napoleonic Wars.
The sitter was the daughter of Richard Caton (1763-1845) of Baltimore, Maryland, and his wife Mary (1770-1846), daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), the only Catholic and last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Marianne married firstly Robert Patterson (1781-1822), the son of an Irish-born American businessman. Robert's sister, Elizabeth, married, in 1803, Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon's youngest brother who reigned as King of Westphalia from 1807-13. Accompanied by two of her sisters, Elizabeth and Louisa, Marianne and her husband came to Europe for the benefit of her health. The Caton heiresses became celebrated figures in society, where they were known as the 'American Three Graces'. Elizabeth married George Stafford-Jerningham, 8th Baron Stafford, while Louisa married firstly Sir Felton Hervey-Bathurst and, following his death in 1819, secondly, in 1828, Francis D'Arcy-Osborne, Marquess of Carmarthen and later 7th Duke of Leeds.
After Robert's death in 1822, Marianne married Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley (1760-1842), on 29 October 1825 in Dublin, where he was serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, thus making her the Vicereine until 1828. Due to the scandal surrounding Wellesley's first marriage to the French actress Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland, with whom he had five children, Marianne's family were vehemently against the union. Such reticence was also shared by Wellesley's younger brother, Arthur, 1st Duke of Wellington, who was then on poor terms with his brother and whose friendship with Marianne had prompted rumours of an affair. Despite this backdrop, the marriage proved successful. In 1830 the Marchioness was appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, a position she held until the King’s death in 1837. On 17 December 1853, aged sixty-five, she died at Hampton Court Palace.
It is thought that Marianne first encountered Wellington in Paris in the winter of 1816 while the three sisters were travelling in Europe. His affection for Marianne was such that by the following spring he had commissioned Lawrence to paint her portrait for himself and one of him for her. It is a measure of their friendship that, until then, Wellington had never commissioned Lawrence to paint his wife or indeed any other lady. In a letter sent from Cambrai, dated 27 May 1817, Wellington wrote ‘My dear Sir Thomas, I hope you are getting on with the Picture of Mrs Patterson. Pray don’t forget that she will go in the middle of June; and then you have no chance of seeing any more of her’ (Royal Academy Archive, LAW/2⁄201). On 8 September, Wellington wrote again from Cambrai, ‘I have had a letter from Mrs Patterson expressing great impatience to have the Pictures’ (A Selection from the Private Correspondence of the First Duke of Wellington, London, 1950, p. 158). The portrait of Marianne remained at Stratfield Saye (1817; private collection; see Garlick, op. cit., 1989, p. 278, no. 802[a]), the house given to Wellington by the state in 1817. A miniature of Lawrence’s portrait, painted by Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, was commissioned by Wellington and kept in a concealed panel in one of his Breguet watches.
The portrait of Wellington for Marianne – unquestionably one of Lawrence's great masterpieces and along with the preceding lot, one of the two most iconic images of Britain's most celebrated military hero – was bequeathed to the 2nd Duke in 1853 and remains the jewel in the crown of the collection at Apsley House. Rarely seen in public, Lawrence's portrait of Marianne was hung alongside that of Wellington at Apsley House for the 2022 exhibition Wellington, Women and Friendship. Providentially, the picture hanging on Marianne's other side in the exhibition was a portrait of Harriet Arbuthnot, another of Wellington's intimate female friends who, along with her husband, commissioned the aforementioned preceding lot.
The present portrait is one of the eighteen ‘Large Drawings, from the Life, on Canvas’ that were included in Lawrence’s posthumous 1830 sale at Christie’s (op. cit.). The catalogue page containing these drawings (fig. 1), which reads as a roll-call of European monarchy and aristocracy, leading political figures and artists, carried the following lines:
‘It may be safely affirmed that, in their kind, they have never been surpassed, if indeed they have been equalled’.
As Lucy Peltz has recently observed, while these studies clearly serve as a valuable record of Lawrence’s initial responses to particular subjects, no doubt intended to assist him in the completion of important commissions when those sitters were unavailable, some were evidently executed as independent works for display (Thomas Lawrence, Regency Power and Brilliance, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2010, p. 178). Although the present work remained in Lawrence's studio until his death, the absence of any surviving portrait in oil of Marianne corresponding to this highly finished drawing would seem to suggest that it was one such work.
The sitter was the daughter of Richard Caton (1763-1845) of Baltimore, Maryland, and his wife Mary (1770-1846), daughter of Charles Carroll of Carrollton (1737-1832), the only Catholic and last surviving signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Marianne married firstly Robert Patterson (1781-1822), the son of an Irish-born American businessman. Robert's sister, Elizabeth, married, in 1803, Jérôme Bonaparte, Napoleon's youngest brother who reigned as King of Westphalia from 1807-13. Accompanied by two of her sisters, Elizabeth and Louisa, Marianne and her husband came to Europe for the benefit of her health. The Caton heiresses became celebrated figures in society, where they were known as the 'American Three Graces'. Elizabeth married George Stafford-Jerningham, 8th Baron Stafford, while Louisa married firstly Sir Felton Hervey-Bathurst and, following his death in 1819, secondly, in 1828, Francis D'Arcy-Osborne, Marquess of Carmarthen and later 7th Duke of Leeds.
After Robert's death in 1822, Marianne married Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley (1760-1842), on 29 October 1825 in Dublin, where he was serving as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, thus making her the Vicereine until 1828. Due to the scandal surrounding Wellesley's first marriage to the French actress Hyacinthe-Gabrielle Roland, with whom he had five children, Marianne's family were vehemently against the union. Such reticence was also shared by Wellesley's younger brother, Arthur, 1st Duke of Wellington, who was then on poor terms with his brother and whose friendship with Marianne had prompted rumours of an affair. Despite this backdrop, the marriage proved successful. In 1830 the Marchioness was appointed a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, a position she held until the King’s death in 1837. On 17 December 1853, aged sixty-five, she died at Hampton Court Palace.
It is thought that Marianne first encountered Wellington in Paris in the winter of 1816 while the three sisters were travelling in Europe. His affection for Marianne was such that by the following spring he had commissioned Lawrence to paint her portrait for himself and one of him for her. It is a measure of their friendship that, until then, Wellington had never commissioned Lawrence to paint his wife or indeed any other lady. In a letter sent from Cambrai, dated 27 May 1817, Wellington wrote ‘My dear Sir Thomas, I hope you are getting on with the Picture of Mrs Patterson. Pray don’t forget that she will go in the middle of June; and then you have no chance of seeing any more of her’ (Royal Academy Archive, LAW/2⁄201). On 8 September, Wellington wrote again from Cambrai, ‘I have had a letter from Mrs Patterson expressing great impatience to have the Pictures’ (A Selection from the Private Correspondence of the First Duke of Wellington, London, 1950, p. 158). The portrait of Marianne remained at Stratfield Saye (1817; private collection; see Garlick, op. cit., 1989, p. 278, no. 802[a]), the house given to Wellington by the state in 1817. A miniature of Lawrence’s portrait, painted by Marie-Victoire Jaquotot, was commissioned by Wellington and kept in a concealed panel in one of his Breguet watches.
The portrait of Wellington for Marianne – unquestionably one of Lawrence's great masterpieces and along with the preceding lot, one of the two most iconic images of Britain's most celebrated military hero – was bequeathed to the 2nd Duke in 1853 and remains the jewel in the crown of the collection at Apsley House. Rarely seen in public, Lawrence's portrait of Marianne was hung alongside that of Wellington at Apsley House for the 2022 exhibition Wellington, Women and Friendship. Providentially, the picture hanging on Marianne's other side in the exhibition was a portrait of Harriet Arbuthnot, another of Wellington's intimate female friends who, along with her husband, commissioned the aforementioned preceding lot.
The present portrait is one of the eighteen ‘Large Drawings, from the Life, on Canvas’ that were included in Lawrence’s posthumous 1830 sale at Christie’s (op. cit.). The catalogue page containing these drawings (fig. 1), which reads as a roll-call of European monarchy and aristocracy, leading political figures and artists, carried the following lines:
‘It may be safely affirmed that, in their kind, they have never been surpassed, if indeed they have been equalled’.
As Lucy Peltz has recently observed, while these studies clearly serve as a valuable record of Lawrence’s initial responses to particular subjects, no doubt intended to assist him in the completion of important commissions when those sitters were unavailable, some were evidently executed as independent works for display (Thomas Lawrence, Regency Power and Brilliance, exhibition catalogue, New Haven and London, 2010, p. 178). Although the present work remained in Lawrence's studio until his death, the absence of any surviving portrait in oil of Marianne corresponding to this highly finished drawing would seem to suggest that it was one such work.