CIRCLE OF GEORGE GOWER | PORTRAIT OF LETTICE KNOLLYS, COUNTESS OF ESSEX AND COUNTESS OF LEICESTER (1543 - 1634), BUST LENGTH, IN A BLACK DOUBLET, LACE RUFF AND PEARL-DECORATED CAP

Anonymous sale ("Property of a Lady"), London, Sotheby's, 30 January 1974, lot 155 (as English School, circa 1600, and with an inscription, now removed);

Removed from Delfyn Cottage, Deal, Kent;

Anonymous sale, South Kensington, Christie's, 23 May 2002, lot 2 (as Circle of George Gower);

There acquired.

Lettice Knollys was the grand-niece of Elizabeth I's mother, Anne Boleyn, and was thus introduced to Elizabeth's court at an early age. She married Walter Devereux, Viscount of Hereford, who in 1572 became Earl of Essex. While Essex was away in Ireland, Lettice probably began an affair with the queen's favorite, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. This caused Lettice to fall out of favor with Elizabeth, especially when Essex died in 1576 and Lettice married Leicester in secret in 1578. After losing her second husband in 1589, Lettice remarried with Sir Christopher Blount, but both he and Lettice's eldest son Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, were executed for treason in 1601.

When this painting sold in 1974, it was part of a group of portraits of the Knollys family from a private collection, and bore an inscription reading "LETICE KNOWLS COUNTESS OF ESSEX NOW LADY DOWAGER OF THE EARLE OF LEICESTER".