Portrait of a lady, half-length, in a dark dress with lace sleeves

Formerly attributed to Lucas de Heere (1534-1584), the present portrait was re-attributed to George Gower based on comparisons with his portraits of the 1570s, particularly with that of Anne, Lady Fitzwilliam, dated 1577 (R. Strong, The English Icon: Elizabethan and Jacobean Portraiture, 1969, no. 120). The large linked gold chain in the present portrait is handled in a similar fashion to the securely documented portrait by Gower of Sir Thomas Kytson (Tate Britain, London). Recent scholarship has, however, examined the stylistic traits of Gower’s work in a new light (see E. Town, ‘George Gower: portraitist, Mercer, Serjeant Painter’, The Burlington Magazine, September 2020, CLXII, no. 1410) and the underdrawing visible through the paint layer and sparse, gestural application of paint in the present portrait are not features often found in Gower’s portraits. The lettering of the inscription is not the same form as that on Sir Thomas Kytson.

The comparable approach to the drawing of the features and the almost identical pose of the present portrait and two other portraits, one at Agecroft Hall, Virginia and another of ‘Isabel Biddulph’ previously on the art market, suggest that these were all painted by a different, as yet unidentified hand, working in the orbit of Gower.

The sitter’s clothing is close in fashion to that worn by the female sitters in the Smythe family set of portraits by Cornelis Ketel, which are all dated 1579-80 (K.Hearn, Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England, 1530-1630, London, 1995, no. 60). The shape of the ruff, the jewelled black hood and the form of the bodice are all comparable and this could suggest a dating towards the end of the 1570s.

A NOTE ON THE PROVENANCE:

Sir Roy Strong, C.H., F.R.S.L. (b. 1935) is an English art historian, former museum curator, writer, broadcaster, and garden designer. He was made Director of the National Portrait Gallery aged 32, and at 38 Director of the Victoria & Albert Museum, where he stayed until 1987. Sir Roy has published extensively, and is particularly renowned for his knowledge of Elizabethan portraiture, and gardens. In 1971 he married the theatre-designer Julia Trevelyan Oman (1930-2003), and together they created the celebrated gardens at The Laskett, Much Birch, Herefordshire, which Sir Roy has recently gifted to Perennial, the Gardeners' Royal Benevolent Society.