Sir Peter Lely

Commissioned from the artist by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1609-1674), Clarendon House, London;
by descent to his son, Henry Hyde, 2^nd Earl of Clarendon (1638-1709), Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire;
by descent, at Cornbury, and later The Grove, Hertfordshire, to his nephew, Henry Hyde, 2nd Earl of Rochester and later 4th Earl of Clarendon (1672-1753);
transferred to his son, Henry Hyde, 5^th Baron Hyde and Viscount Cornbury (1710-1753), in 1749, who died without issue;
by descent to his niece, Charlotte (d.1790), eldest daughter of William Capel, 3rd Earl of Essex (1697-1743), who married Thomas Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon (1709-1786), of the second creation;
thence by descent to the present owner

Clarendon State Papers, Bodleian MS Clarendon 92, ff 253-254, no. 85, listed among a group of pictures mended and repaired in about 1683-5, as hanging at Cornbury Park;
G. P. Harding, List of Portraits, Pictures in Various Mansions in the United Kingdom, unpublished MS 1804, Vol. II, p. 210;
Lady T. Lewis, Lives of the Friends and Contemporaries of Lord Chancellor Clarendon, London 1852, Vol. III, pp. 253 & 334, no. 40;
G. F. Waagen, Treasures of Art in Great Britain, London 1854, Vol. II, p. 455;
C. H. Collins Baker, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, London 1912, Vol. II, p. 122;
R. B. Beckett, Lely, London 1951, p. 37, no. 49;
R. Gibson, Catalogue of Portraits in the Collection of the Earl of Clarendon, Wallop 1977, p. 97, no. 107 (illus.);
A. Laing, Art and Patronage in the Caroline Courts, Cambridge 1993, pp. 112-113

PAINT SURFACE The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden who is an independent expert and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has been strongly lined. It was not possible to see the back but the lining is probably quite recent, with the restoration. The extreme top edge is slightly ragged with a little strip lost near the top right corner. However this is scarcely noticeable in the darkest upper right foliage. The lining has preserved the texture of the brushwork with the distinctive mild impasto contrasting with the smooth silky treatment of the flesh quite well. The less dense areas have become rather thin especially in some of the darks, including parts of the hair and the shadows behind the head as well as lower down in the shadowy area behind the elbow and a few other places such as the stomach. The flesh itself remains well preserved generally, with minute strengthening touches in places and one stronger little patch of retouching at the top of the forehead. Occasional touches in the lower drapery are scarcely significant. The putto at upper left has a diagonal line of retouching across his lower face, presumably from an old scrape, but there is little trace of other accidental damage and the strength of the original technique has enabled the unity of the painting to remain quite finely intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions. FRAME Held in its original seventeenth century carved and gilded Sunderland frame, which was regilded in the nineteenth century. To speak to a specialist about this lot please contact Julian Gascoigne on +44 (0)207 293 5482, or at julian.gascoigne@sothebys.com, or Emmeline Hallmark on 44 (0)207 293 5407, or at emmeline.hallmark@sothebys.com.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Edward Hyde, 1^st Earl of Clarendon was undoubtedly one of Sir Peter Lely's most important patrons. Despite notoriously fickle political loyalties the ambitious Lely would have been fully aware of Clarendon's closeness to Charles II and his significant position amongst the Royalists. Most of Clarendon's close circle including Goring, Mennes and others had to sat to van Dyck, Lely's predecessor who had died in 1641. By the late 1650s the Royalist's power was in the ascendence again, and Lely would have been determined to be part of that. The astonishingly beautiful quality of this work which dates from this period must surely have been painted by Lely as a deliberate attempt to impress Clarendon and his circle at such an important time. The aim clearly had the desired affect as, within a month of Charles II being restored to the throne, Lely was appointed Principal Painter to the King and Clarendon commissioned two large scale portraits of his daughter Anne Hyde and her new husband, Charles II's brother, James Duke of York (both National Portrait Gallery, Scotland).

Lely's female portraits from the 1660s are arguably 'the most accomplished, sensuous and sumptuous visual productions in the history of portraiture in Britain,'[1] and the present portrait is no exception. Lady Newport is presented not as a personification of a goddess (her name could have made a personification with Diana the goddess of hunting an easy analogy to make) but as an unreservedly ravishing and beautiful young woman. She is portrayed confidently gazing directly at the viewer, dressed in the finest silk and satin drapery which fits tightly in places and seductively falls around her body in others. 

In reality, Lady Newport was as seductively attractive as a marriage proposition as she was as a woman and is portrayed as such by Lely in the present painting. Diana Russell (1622-1694) was the youngest daughter of the reformist and later Royalist Francis Russell, 4^th Earl of Bedford. She was extremely well connected to important if diverse political circles through her brothers in law. One of four daughters, her sister Margaret (d. 1676) married James Hay, 2nd Earl of Carlisle, her sister Anne (d. 1697) married George Digby, son of the Earl of Bristol, and her sister Catherine (c. 1618-1676) married Robert Greville, 2nd Baron Brooke of Beauchamps Court. She herself married Francis Newport (1619-1708) in 1642. Newport was a Royalist and close friend of Clarendon's who apparently (and presumably to Clarendon's admiration) spent much of his wife's £7000 dowry in supporting the Royalist cause. Earlier in 1642 Clarendon had also supported the purchase of a peerage for Newport's father in return for the fee of £6000.

Newport's military career was brief and his actions relatively unheroic (perhaps the reason  that Newport did not make it into Clarendon's gallery but his wife did). Having been Captain of Horse in the Royalist army he was captured near Oswestry in June 1644 and remained a prisoner until March 1648 when he and his father were fined £10,000 for their Royalist sympathies. Newport remained an active Royalist but was arrested in June 1655 and again in 1657. Following the Restoration the King rewarded Newport for his loyalty by appointing him Lord Lieutenant of Shropshire in 1660 and granting him Shrewsbury Castle in 1666. Newport rose further within the Restoration Court becoming Treasurer of the Household in 1672 and being appointed Viscount Newport of Bradford in Shropshire by 1675. Bradford managed to retain his positions during the accession of James II, was finally dismissed from office in 1687 but was re-appointed Cofferer of the Household by William III a position he held until 1702. He had been appointed Earl of Bradford in 1694, and he became  well known for his art collection which included works by Van Dyck, Dobson and Poussin though this magnificent celebratory portrait of his wife appears to have eluded him and was acquired or indeed even commissioned by Lord Clarendon.

[1] C. Macleod in Painted Ladies; Women at the Court of Charles II, 2001, p. 60