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Shown from the waist up in front of a loosely painted landscape, a young woman with pale skin, flushed cheeks, and light brown hair curling softly around her face and neck turns her head to look at us from over her shoulder in this vertical portrait painting. Her body faces our left in profile, and she looks at us with dark brown eyes under arched brows. She has smooth, round cheeks, and her pink lips are closed. She wears a wide brimmed ivory-white, straw hat that casts a shadow across her forehead. At the front of the crown, a tawny-brown bow is set against a ribbon striped with dove gray and white. A sheer, white cape edged with feathers or fur drapes over the shoulders of her rose-pink, satin dress. Ruffles along her chest appear to be tied with fawn-brown bows. A white, textured area near the bottom edge of the canvas suggests that her hands are clasped in front of her waist in a muff. Behind her, a harvest-gold hillside rises to a band of pine-green trees along the right edge of the composition. Filling most of the background, the opalescent sky has pewter-gray clouds angling across a pale blue sky.

George Romney

Mrs. Davies Davenport, 1782-1784

West Building, Main Floor - Gallery 58

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 76.5 x 64 cm (30 1/8 x 25 3/16 in.)

framed: 104.1 x 91.4 x 12.7 cm (41 x 36 x 5 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1937.1.105

Artists / Makers

George Romney (artist) British, 1734 - 1802

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Provenance

Painted for the sitter's husband, Davies Davenport [1757-1837], Capesthorne, Macclesfield, Cheshire; by descent to Sir William Bromley-Davenport [1862-1949];[1] (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 28 July 1926, no. 147); bought by (Duveen Brothers, London and New York); purchased April 1928 by Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh and Washington, D.C.; deeded December 1934 to The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift 1937 to NGA.

[1] The additions of "Davenport family" and William Bromley-Davenport to the former owner table in the NGA collection database are per The Getty Provenance Index, and NGA curatorial files. The Getty Provenance Index, whose source was their Collector's File, says the painting was bequeathed to the third son of Davies Davenport, The Rev. Walter Bromley Davenport [1787-1862], and by him to his son, William Bromley Davenport [1821-1884], who succeeded his cousin, Arthur Henry Davenport [1832-1867]. Davies Davenport's eldest son and successor in the family estate was Edward Davies Davenport [1778-1847], father of Arthur Henry. It is thus also possible that the painting was passed through Edward down to Sir William Bromley-Davenport.

Associated Names

Bromley-Davenport, William
Bromley-Davenport, William, Sir
Davenport family
Davenport, Davies
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Duveen Brothers, Inc.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
Mellon, Andrew W.

Exhibition History

1878: Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the British School. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1878, no. 111.

1892: Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the British School. Winter Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1892, no. 17.

1927: Meisterwerke Englischer Malerei aus drei jahrhunderten, Secession, Vienna, 1927, no. 15, repro.

Technical Summary

The somewhat coarse canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is white, smoothly applied and of moderate thickness. There are thin layers of grey and brown imprimatura except in the area to be occupied by the head. The painting is executed in thick, opaque layers, blended wet into wet, with slight impasto in the whites; only the details of the features are defined crisply over a dried underlayer. Some change in the color of the satin cloak is suggested by the presence of deeper reds beneath the pink of the lower portion. An x-radiograph confirms slight pentimenti in the fall of the drapery folds. There is slight solvent abrasion and flattening of the impasto during lining, a large area of retouching in the neck, and pronounced traction crackle in the brown foliage caused by bitumen, which has been infilled. The slightly pigmented natural resin varnish has been applied over residues of a deeply discolored coating most marked over the bituminous foliage at lower right.

Bibliography

1904: Ward, Humphry and William Roberts. Romney. 2 vols. London, 1904: 1:98, 101, 103-104; 2:41.

1935: Tietze, Hans. Meisterwerke europäischer Malerei in Amerika. Vienna, 1935: 229, repro. (English ed., Masterpieces of European Painting in America. New York, 1939: 229, repro.).

1941: Duveen Brothers. Duveen Pictures in Public Collections of America. New York, 1941: no. 289, repro., as Mrs. Davenport.

1941: Preliminary Catalogue of Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1941: 172, no. 105, as Miss Davenport.

1942: Book of Illustrations. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1942: 241, repro. 18, as Mrs. Davenport.

1944: Cairns, Huntington, and John Walker, eds. Masterpieces of Painting from the National Gallery of Art. New York, 1944: 134, color repro., as Mrs. Davenport.

1949: Paintings and Sculpture from the Mellon Collection. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1949 (reprinted 1953 and 1958): 116, repro., as Mrs. Davenport.

1965: Summary Catalogue of European Paintings and Sculpture. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1965: 116, as Miss Davenport.

1968: National Gallery of Art. European Paintings and Sculpture, Illustrations. Washington, 1968: 103, repro., as Miss Davenport.

1975: European Paintings: An Illustrated Summary Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1975: 308, repro., as Miss Davenport.

1975: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. New York, 1975: no. 515, color repro.

1984: Walker, John. National Gallery of Art, Washington. Rev. ed. New York, 1984: 365, no. 511, color repro., as Mrs. Davenport.

1985: European Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1985: 354, repro., as Mrs. Davenport.

1992: Hayes, John. British Paintings of the Sixteenth through Nineteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1992: 237-238, repro. 238.