Estimated Price:

   $   

Realized Price:

   $   

What is this symbol? This symbol indicates that this auction hose has verified this price result.

Log in or subscribe to view price data

PROPERTY FROM THE COLLECTIONS OF PERCIVAL D.GRIFFITHS AND FREDERICK POKE SIR PETER LELY 1618-1680 PORTRAIT OF LADY ELIZABETH WRIOTHESLEY (1646-1690), LATER COUNTESS OF NORTHUMBERLAND AND LATER AGAIN, COUNTESS OF MONTAGU

three quarter length, wearing a pale grey dress

Signed l.l. with the artist's initials and inscribed c.r. with the identity of the sitter

Oil on canvas, in a fine early eighteenth century carved wood frame

PROVENANCE

Lady Anne Capel, the sitter's neice, who married Charles Howard, 3rd Earl of Carlisle;
Thence by descent until sold from Castle Howard, Christie's, 18 February, 1944, lot 54
LITERATURE AND REFERENCES

Lord Hawkesbury, Catalogue of the Portraits, Miniatures & c, at Castle Howard, 1904, p. 38, no. 547;
R.W. Goulding. 'Wriothesley Portraits', Walpole Society, vol. VIII, 1920, p. 91, illus. pl. LVI
R.B. Beckett, Lely,1951, p. 54, no. 360
CATALOGUE NOTE

The sitter was the sixth and youngest daughter of Thomas Wriothesley, 4th Earl of Southampton and his second wife Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Legh, 1st Earl of Chichester. Her father was a loyal supporter of Charles I during the Civil War and served as Lord Treasurer under Charles II. On 23rd December 1662, at the age of sixteen, she married Jocelyn Percy, 11th Earl of Northumberland, son of the celebrated Lord High Admiral Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland. She accompanied her young husband to Italy in 1669 where he was taken ill. He died the next year in Turin at the early age of twenty-five, leaving only one child, a daughter, Elizabeth, who later married Henry Cavendiah, Earl of Ogle.

Following her husband's death, Elizabeth became a great heiress and is said to have had numerous suitors, all of whom she rejected in the hope that she would marry James, Duke of York. In Paris she met the Ambassador, Ralph Montagu, Lord Montagu of Boughton, who courted her enthusiastically to the annoyance of Madame de la Fayette. They were married privately on 24th August 1673 at his house at Titchfield in Hampshire. Her husband was a leading figure in Charles II's Court, who served as ambassador in Paris with great splendour over a number of years. He was an active supporter of William III, who made him Earl of Montagu in 1689 and subsequently, in 1705, Duke of Montagu.

Elizabeth Wriothesley was an important patron of Lely to whom she sat a number of times. Portraits of her were included both in the Windsor Beauties at Hampton Court and the series of portraits of beauties which Cosimo III, Grand Duke of Tuscany commissioned from Lely.