Circa 1760 England
After Francis Cotes – Portrait of a Lady
£8,500
1 in stock
Height 42 inches (107 cm)
Width 35 inches (89 cm)
Depth 3 inches (7.5 cm)
After Francis Cotes, circa 1760
Portrait of a Lady
Oil on canvas, housed in a period style frame
Provenance: Private Collection, Germany
The identity of the lady in this portrait is generally unknown, though she bears a striking resemblance to Ellis Mathew, first wife of Francis Mathew, later 1st Earl Llandaff. Her image in a mezzotint print after the original by Francis Cotes exists which suggests a strong similarity.
Ellis was born in Tinny Park, Wicklow, County Wicklow, the daughter of James Smyth, an MP in Ireland for Antrim. She married Francis Mathew in 1764 and had three sons and one daughter. She died in 1781.
The style and manner of this version of Cotes’s portrait which first came on the market in 1984 bears a striking resemblance to the work in oil of Katherine Read and possibly is a copy dating to the mid 1760s undertaken shortly after the original. It is noted that Read similarly undertook such work with Sir Joshua Rreynolds and it is not inconceivable that she did the same with Cotes.
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