Live Auction 6258Mount Congreve: The London Sale
Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713-1784 Dover)
Lot 4

Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713-1784 Dover)

Portrait of a lady, three-quarter-length, in a white satin Van Dyck dress, trimmed with blue bows and lace, beside a column, in a landscape

Closed23 May 2012

Price Realised

GBP 34,850

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Allan Ramsay (Edinburgh 1713-1784 Dover)
Portrait of a lady, three-quarter-length, in a white satin Van Dyck dress, trimmed with blue bows and lace, beside a column, in a landscape
signed and dated 'A. Ramsay 1741' (on the plinth, centre right)
oil on canvas
50 1/8 x 40¼ in. (127.3 x 102.2 cm.)
in an 18th century carved and gilded frame

Mrs. McCalmont, Bushey House, Bushey, Hertfordshire; Christie's, London, 23 January 1920, lot 92 (135 gns.).

Specialist note

This unrecorded portrait is entirely characteristic of Ramsay's work in London in the early 1740s. The sitter's Van Dyck costume and pearl necklace can be compared with Ramsay's portraits, also painted in 1741, of Jemima, Countess of Hardwicke (1722-1797; see A. Smart, Allan Ramsay: A Complete catalogue of his paintings, Yale, 1999, p. 235, nos. 77 and 79). 'Van Dyck' costume was fashionable in both society and portraiture in the 1740s and Ramsay, along with other contemporary portraitists, painted a number of his sitters in this vein.