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Maria Verelst

Portrait of a Lady, c. 1715/1730, perhaps close to 1725

Not on View

Medium

oil on canvas

Dimensions

overall: 91.4 x 71.1 cm (36 x 28 in.)

framed: 105.4 x 85.4 x 7.6 cm (41 1/2 x 33 5/8 x 3 in.)

Credit Line

Andrew W. Mellon Collection

Accession Number

1947.17.95

Artists / Makers

Maria Verelst (painter) Dutch, 1680 - 1744

Image Use

This image is in the public domain.
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Inscription

falsely signed and dated, lower left on ledge: Jn.Smibert.fecit.1746

Provenance

(Rose M. [Mrs. Augustus] de Forest, New York); sold 2 July 1924 to Thomas B. Clarke [1848-1931], New York, as a portrait of Susannah de Lancey, Lady Warren, by John Smibert;[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; 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, brother of the supposed sitter, supplied by the dealer de Forest, has been described as unsatisfactory and cannot be verified. Henry Wilder Foote, John Smibert (Cambridge, Mass., 1950), 246.

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. 4, as Susannah DeLancey Warren by John Smibert.

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 Susannah De Lancey Warren by John Smibert.

Technical Summary

The medium-weight canvas is plain woven; it has been lined. The ground is a light warm brown, thinly applied. The painting is executed very thinly, blended wet into wet, without impasto. The "signature" lies on top of a thin layer of varnish, and is easily soluble.[1] There are three horizontal tears, across the chest, below the chin, and above the head on the left side of the painting. The paint surface is extensively abraded except in the head, which was painted more thickly; there is minimal retouching in the head but elsewhere there are carelessly applied retouchings throughout. The thick natural resin varnish has discolored yellow to a significant degree.

[1] Report of chemical test by Francis Sullivan, resident restorer at the National Gallery (Dorinda Evans, note, 12 March 1968, in NGA curatorial files).

Bibliography

1932: Sherman, Frederic Fairchild. Early American Painting. New York and London, 1932: 20.

1950: Foote, Henry Wilder. John Smibert. Cambridge, Mass., 1950: 246.

1970: American Paintings and Sculpture: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1970: 144, repro., as by Unknown American.

1980: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1980: 289, repro., as by Unknown American.

1992: American Paintings: An Illustrated Catalogue. National Gallery of Art, Washington, 1992: 436.

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: 318-320, repro. 319.