Attributed to GAINSBOROUGH DUPONT (1754-1797)

H1662

oil on canvas, thought to be in original carved and gilded frame

25.00 inch wide   30.00 inch high

63.50 cm wide  76.20 cm high

According to old labels on the back, it was loaned for an exhibition at the South Kensington Museum by Mr C.Elphinstone Dalrymple of Aberdeen, in 18(?)6 and identifies the sitter as Lady Hester Stanhope.

Gainsborough Dupont was born in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 20 December 1754, the only son of Sarah, one of Thomas Gainsborough's elder sisters, and Philip Dupont. He was apprenticed to Gainsborough in January 1772 and was to work with him--so far as we know his uncle's only assistant--until Gainsborough's death in 1788. He was trained at the Royal Academy Schools, which he entered in March 1775. From 1779 on he made a number of mezzotints of Gainsborough's portraits. He took over the studio in 1788, and, after Mrs. Gainsborough's death in 1793, moved to Bloomsbury. Dupont was much employed by George III, who admired his work, and to William Pitt he owed his principal commission, a large group portrait. Thomas Harris, the proprietor of Covent Garden Theatre, engaged him to paint a series of portraits of actors. He also painted landscapes. On three occasions he tried, unsuccessfully, to secure election as an Associate of the Royal Academy. He died in London on 20 January 1797.

Very good

oil on canvas - 30 x 25ins, in original frame

The life and career of Lady Hester Stanhope had its ups and downs. She started life at the top as the favorite daughter of the wealthy Lord Charles, 3rd Earl of Stanhope; was impoverished and orphaned at 27, after her father succeeded in giving away his fortune out of sympathy for the French revolutionaries of 1789; became within one year the official hostess of the Prime Minister of England, William Pitt the Younger, her uncle; was thrice disappointed in love, and fled England, never to return, at the age of 33; was crowned, according to her own account, "Queen of the Desert" as successor to Queen Zenobia of Syria in the ruined city of Palmyra; and finally died alone in poverty & squalor in her palatial retreat in the Lebanese mountains, its entrance mortared shut against her hordes of creditors.

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