£20,000
* * Studio of Sir Anthony Van Dyck (1599-1641)
Portrait of Lady Mary Villiers (1622-1641), Lady Herbert and later Duchess of Lennox and Richmond (1622-1685), full-length, seated in a landscape as St Agnes, her right arm resting on a lamb and a palm branch in her left hand
oil on canvas
inscribed Mary Duchess of Richmond Daughter of George Duke of Buckingham 1640
213 x 130cm
Please note this lot attracts an additional import tax of 5% on the hammer price
Lady Mary Villiers was the daughter of Sir George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Lady Katherine Manners (d.1649). She as only six when her father was murdered in 1628 and came under protection of Charles I. Her first marriage to Charles Lord Herbert in 1634 was brief as he died of smallpox in 1635. In 1637 she married the 4th Duke of Lennox and was given away by Charles I. He was created Duke of Richmond in 1641. They had two children Esmé Stuart (1649-1660) and Lady Mary Stewart who married Richard Butler 1st Earl of Arran. After the Duke of Richmond died in 1655 the Duchess went into exile in Paris with her son. He died in Paris in 1660 and she returned to England probably after the restoration. Sometime between 1660 and 1664 she married Colonel Thomas Howard (d.1678) about whom little is known.
Provenance: (Probably) Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia (1599-1662), the Winter Queen, eldest daughter of King James VI and I of Scotland and England, sister of King Charles I, possibly at the Wassenaer Hof am Kneuterdjik, The Hague, and at the Koningshuis, Rhenen, by whom bequeathed to her friend William Craven, 1st Earl of Craven (1608-1697), at Coombe Abbey, Warwickshire, and by descent; Phillips, London, 11th December 1984, Lot 3; Christies 9th December 2011, Lot 36, thence Private collection Guernsey
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