Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.

Portrait of Mrs Anthony Eyre (d. 1800), three-quarter length, wearing a white frilled satin dress, standing in a landscape

VAT reduced rateUK: Greenford Park Warehouse

This lot has been withdrawn

Lot Details

Description

The Property of a Nobleman

Sir Joshua Reynolds, P.R.A.

Plympton, Devon 1723 - 1792 London

Portrait of Mrs Anthony Eyre (d. 1800), three-quarter length, wearing a white frilled satin dress, standing in a landscape

oil on canvas

unframed: 127.4 x 102 cm.; 50 1/8 x 40 1/8 in.

framed: 149.5 x 122.8 cm.; 58 7/8 x 48 3/8 in.

By descent in the family of the sitter at Grove Hall, East Retford, Nottinghamshire, to
Frances Julia Eyre (d. 1844), who in 1814 married Granville Harcourt-Vernon (d. 1879);
Thence by descent to Lt.-Col. G.C.F. Harcourt-Vernon;
By whose Executors sold ('The Property of the Grove Settled Estate'), London, Sotheby's, 26 March 1975, lot 53.

A. Graves and W.V. Cronin, A history of the works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, vol. I, London 1899, p. 40;
E.K. Waterhouse, 'Reynolds' Sitter Book for 1755', in The Walpole Society, vol. XLI, 1966-68, p. 149;
D. Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds. A complete catalogue of his paintings, New Haven and London 2000, text vol., p. 183, cat. no. 589, reproduced plates vol., p. 170, fig. 125.

Judith Laetitia Bury married Anthony Eyre (d. 1788), of Grove Hall, Nottinghamshire, in 1755. This portrait, and that of her husband (now in a private collection), were painted that same year to commemorate the occasion.¹ Anthony Eyre was MP for Boroughbridge from 1774-84; he bought the estate of Grove in 1762, and the pendant portraits descended in the family, and through marriage the Harcourt-Vernon family, until their appearance on the market in 1975, at which point they were separated.

Mrs Eyre (or Ayre) had several appointments with Reynolds, on: 7, 14, 19 and 22 March, 1 April, and 2 and 6 May 1755. A letter from Reynolds dated 18 October 1755 (which accompanied the portrait of Anthony Eyre at the Sotheby's 1975 sale), apologises for the portraits of Eyre and his wife having been dispatched without their frames, which were subsequently 'sent this day by the York Waggon.' The bill for the pictures was £50-8s., the frames £10-10s., and the packing cases 15 shillings.²

¹ See Mannings 2000, text vol., p. 183, cat. no. 588, reproduced plates vol., p. 170, fig. 126.

² J. Ingamells and J. Edgcumbe, The letters of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London 2000, no. 255.