A Lady with a Servant c.1660
Oil on canvas | 98.2 x 85.3 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external) | RCIN 404105
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This painting was purchased by George IV in 1806 and in George IV’s inventory of 1819 it was described as by an anonymous artist of an anonymous sitter and valued at a modest ten guineas. In the 1859 Inventory of paintings in the Royal Collection this was described as a portrait of Catherine of Braganza and was hanging in Buckingham Palace. More recently it has been thought to be by Honthorst of Princess Sophia, later Electress of Hanover and mother to George I.
The current consensus is that the original inventory description of an unknown sitter is probably most accurate. It was not purchased as a royal sitter and was not in the Royal Collection until the nineteenth century. It was then that the association with Princess Sophia developed. There is nothing particularly royal about the sitter and she does not have any attributes associated with that status. The woman has been depicted in a form of undress, which would be inconceivable for an unmarried princess at this date and unlikely for a married one.
The iconography of this image derives from Dutch depictions of worldliness and vanity - a woman dressing, with jewellery, admiring herself in a mirror, which is often held by a black servant or elderly woman. During the seventeenth and eighteenth century it was common for artists to include black servants within commissioned portraits of aristocratic women. At that time such figures were considered symbols of status, and including them alongside white sitters enabled the artist to provide a dramatic contrast in skin colour for aesthetic effect, thereby exaggerating the paleness of the woman's skin, which would have been interpreted as a sign of beauty and noble birth. Unfortunately, as in this case, the identities of these secondary figures are rarely recorded and their status is often ambiguous.
If this is a portrait (as opposed to a type) then it probably dates from the Restoration period when mores in the depiction of women were at their most relaxed. The sitter’s feathered headdress and style of clothing however look back to Arcadian portraits of the 1630s, see for example the portrait of Anne Uvedale, Mrs Henslowe by Cornelius Johnson (Verney Collection) and Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland after Van Dyck (Penshurst, Kent). Even if it was produced during the more licentious Restoration period however, the sitter would have to be a wife (or mistress), not a young lady looking for a husband.
Provenance
Purchased by George IV by 1806; recorded in store at Carlton House in 1816 (no 297) and 1819 (no 331), with no identification of artist or sitters
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Creator(s)
Acquirer(s)
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Medium and techniques
Oil on canvas
Measurements
98.2 x 85.3 cm (support, canvas/panel/stretcher external)
118.1 x 103.1 x 6.8 cm (frame, external)
Category
Object type(s)
Subject(s)
Other number(s)
Alternative title(s)
A Lady with a Black Servant
Princess Sophia, Electress of Hanover (1630-1714)
Sophia, Electress of Hanover (1630-1714)
Catherine of Braganza, previously entitled (?)