Portrait of a Lady, c. 1715/1730

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 75.1 x 62.9 cm (29 9/16 x 24 3/4 in.)

framed: 90.2 x 78.1 x 7.9 cm (35 1/2 x 30 3/4 x 3 1/8 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.41

Artists / Makers

British 18th Century (painter)

Image Use

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Inscription

probably falsely signed and dated, lower right: Gt. Duyckinck A.D. 1699

Provenance

(Rose M. [Mrs. Augustus] de Forest, New York); sold 21 April 1924 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York, as a portrait of Anne van Cortland by Gerret Duyckinck;[1] sold by Clarke's executors to (M. Knoedler & Co., New York), from whom it was purchased 29 January 1936, as part of the Clarke collection, by The A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, Pittsburgh; gift to NGA, 1947.

[1] According to 1928 Clarke exhibition catalogue annotated with information from files of M. Knoedler & Co., NY (copy in NGA curatorial records and in NGA library). The provenance from James de Lancey, of New York, son of the supposed sitter, supplied by the dealer, de Forest, cannot be verified.

Associated Names

Clarke, Thomas Benedict
Knoedler & Company, M.
Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust, The A.W.
de Forest, Rose M.

Exhibition History

1925: A Loan Exhibition of the Earliest Known Portraits of Americans Painted in This Country by Painters of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, The Century Association, New York, 1925, no. 3, as Anne Van Cortlandt by Gerret Duyckinck.

1928: Portraits by Early American Artists of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, Collected by Thomas B. Clarke, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1928-1931, unnumbered and unpaginated catalogue, as Anne Van Cortlandt by Gerret Duyckinck.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight canvas is coarsely plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is off-white, smoothly applied. There is a thin, warm imprimatura. The composition is painted within a gray feigned oval. The painting is executed in smooth layers, blended wet into wet, in the flesh tones, which are built up from the cool shadows to the warm highlights, with livelier, impasted handling in the highlights of the draperies. There is some abrasion in the paint surface, especially in the blue drapery, where there is extensive retouching; other retouching is minimal, except over a paint loss to the right of the sitter's head. The thick, natural resin varnish has discolored slightly.

Bibliography

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 158, repro., as American (?).

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 307, as Unknown [Formerly Considered American].

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: 310-311, repro. 310.