Name: SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. (PLYMPTON 1723-1792 LONDON)
Brand: Portrait of Sophia Southwell, née Campbell, later Lady de Clifford (1743-1828), bust-length
Price: 28000.00 GBP
Availability: InStock

SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS, P.R.A. (PLYMPTON 1723-1792 LONDON)
Portrait of Sophia Southwell, née Campbell, later Lady de Clifford (1743-1828), bust-length
oil on canvas, the corners made up
31¹⁄₈ x 25³⁄₄ in. (79.1 x 65.4 cm.)

By descent from the sitter to her son,
Edward Southwell, 21st Baron de Clifford (1767-1832), King's Weston; his sale (†), Christie's, London, 20 April 1833, lot 56, as 'Sir Joshua Reynolds. Portrait of the Dowager Lady Clifford, in an oval- very spirited' (40 gns. to Smart).
(Possibly) re-acquired by the de Clifford Family, from whom acquired circa 1884-1888 (see Graves and Cronin, op. cit., III, p. 915), by,
with Charles Wertheimer, London, where acquired on 23 March 1888 by,
with Thomas Agnew & Sons, where acquired on 30 April 1888 by,
James Price, from whom acquired on 21 June 1893 by,
with Thomas Agnew & Sons, where acquired on 2 June 1894 by,
Abel Buckley (1835-1908), from whose executors acquired on 17 February 1910 by,
with Thomas Agnew & Sons, where acquired on 12 July 1910 by,
G.L. Bevan, from whom acquired on 18 July 1910 by,
with Thomas Agnew & Sons, where acquired on 11 April 1911 by,
Joseph Bruce Ismay (1862-1937), and by descent to the seller at the following,
Anonymous sale [Property from a Private Collection]; Sotheby's, London, 4 July 2013, lot 195.

A. Graves & W. V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1899, II, p. 544, illustrated; III, p. 915.
E.K. Waterhouse, Reynolds, London, 1941, p. 58, with erroneous provenance.
D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of his Paintings, London and New Haven 2000, I, p. 421, no. 1654; II, p. 378, fig. 882, illustrated before overpaint removal.

London, Royal Academy, Winter Exhibition, 1875, no. 61, lent by Lord de Clifford.

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Lot Essay

Sophia Southwell was the daughter of Samuel and Mary Campbell of Mount Campbell, County Leitrim. In 1765, the year preceding this portrait, Sophia married Edward Southwell, who later became 20^thBaron de Clifford in 1776. After Edward’s death in 1777, Sophia was made Governess to Princess Charlotte of Wales, the daughter of the future King George IV and Caroline of Brunswick.

Four appointments with the present sitter were recorded in Reynolds’ account book in March and April 1966, and two payments in the artist’s Ledger were noted in March and May of the same year, totalling £36.15s (Mannings, op. cit.). The sitter appears to have maintained contact with Reynolds after this portrait; he visited her at Spring Gardens, Westminster, in 1779, had appointments with her in 1782 and 1784 and painted her again in 1786, the portrait now untraced (Mannings, op. cit., p. 421, no. 1655).

The present work was originally painted as an oval and extended to a rectangle at an unknown date after 1899, when Graves and Cronin published an illustration of the painting in oval-form (op. cit., p. 544). When the corners were made up the feigned, sculpted oval and trompe l’oeil curtain were extended. At the time of Mannings’ catalogue in 2000 the feigned oval and curtain had been painted over to suggest an atmospheric sky, overpaint that was subsequently removed prior to the 2014 sale.