ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN RAPHAEL SMITH (1751-1812). Portrait of a ...

Hammer

£400

ATTRIBUTED TO JOHN RAPHAEL SMITH (1751-1812). Portrait of a Lady, traditionally identified as Elizabeth Edwards, seated half-length, wearing a white dress, a coastal shore with a distant ship beyond, pastel, on paper laid down on backing card, 13 x 10in.

Provenance: The sitter's Family, by descent

The sitter is believed to be Betty Bonninge who married Charles Edwards in Taunton in 1781. She had been baptised there in 1759

The reverse bears a twentieth century inscription (over an earlier one) attached to the backboard which states 'Mrs Charles H. Edwards, nee Elizabeth Bonninge, mother of the late Thomas Howard Edwards of Madeira, the sitter died together with her husband (Charles H. Edwards) - a west Indian merchant, of yellow fever whilst on a visit to the West Indies in 1785.

The inscription further notes that the sitter was the eldest of three sisters 'all great beauties'. The inscription also amusingly outlines a story of how the three' Bonninge' 'sisters had been walking in The Mall, when one of them boxed the Duke of York's ears for his rudeness in peering under her bonnet when passing by with the then Prince of Wales (afterwards George 1V), upon which he said 'I thought to find an Angel but found a Devil'.

For a comparable portrait by Raphael Smith with stylistic similarities cf. Portrait of a Girl. Woolley and Wallis, Salisbury. Lot 165 25 Sept 2014