JOHN MICHAEL WRIGHT | Portrait of a Lady, traditionally identified as Lady Herries

Anonymous sale, London, Sotheby's Olympia, 30 November 2005, lot 57 (as Follower of Robert Walker).

The sitter has traditionally been identified, according to an inscription on the stretcher, as ‘Lady Herries’. She is possibly Lady Lucy Douglas, daughter of William Douglas, 1st Marquess of Douglas and wife of Robert Maxwell, 4th Earl of Nithsdale (1628–83), who was known by the subsidiary title of Lord Herries until 1677, when he inherited the Earldom. 

We are grateful to Dr Duncan Thomson for endorsing the attribution on the basis of photographs.