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Description: | The sitter in this portrait has been identified as Anne Montague, Countess of Suffolk. She was the eldest daughter of Robert Montague, 3rd Earl of Manchester. Aged twenty-two she became the third wife of the sixty-four year old James Howard, 3rd Earl of Suffolk, who died in 1689; at her death she was buried beside him at Walden. In a letter of A. Stephens to Abigail Harley of 1683 she is remembered as: 'one of the rarest wives I ever heard of, for her Lord, for the most part with the gout and three score and six year old, is confided greatly to his chamber. She never stirs from him and admits very few visits if he be not so well as to see them' (quoted on the label on the back of the portrait). This portrait was probably painted when the sitter was aged eighteen or twenty, before she married in 1682 and before Lely's death in 1680. It is possible that it was painted to record her engagement as she wears a ring on her right hand, which rests on a globe, a symbol of truth in the seventeenth century. Her introspective look, as if contemplating the future, further supports this reading. The sitter's pose is typical of Lely's frequently repeated compositions, in this case the prime version of the composition seems to derive from the female figure in Lely's double portrait of Arthur Capel, 1st Earl of Essex and his wife Elisabeth Percy in the Paul Mellon collection. | Subjects: | Countess of Suffolk) portrait (Anne Montague | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Lely, Peter (Dutch painter and draftsman, 1618-1680, active in England) Æ Attributed to studio of | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8727... | Go to resource |
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