Ozias Humphry, Portrait of Mary Sackville, Countess of Thanet, 1771

Chicago:

Blythe Sobol, “Ozias Humphry, Portrait of Mary Sackville, Countess of Thanet, 1771,” catalogue entry in Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan, The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, vol. 3, ed. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan (Kansas City, MO: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024), https://doi.org/10.37764/8322.5.1438.

MLA:

Sobol, Blythe. “Ozias Humphry, Portrait of Mary Sackville, Countess of Thanet, 1771,” catalogue entry. Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, Blythe Sobol, and Maggie Keenan. The Starr Collection of Portrait Miniatures, 1500–1850: The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, edited by Aimee Marcereau DeGalan, vol. 3, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2024. doi: 10.37764/8322.5.1438.

See the artist’s biography in volume 4.

Ozias Humphry completed at least four versions of this miniature of Mary Sackville, Countess of Thanet (English, 1746–1778), three of which are recorded in his fee book.¹ He also painted a pastel portrait of Thanet, which may have been commissioned, along with this miniature, by her brother John Sackville, 3rd Duke of Dorset (1745–1799), Humphry’s earliest and most prolific patron.² The Duke of Dorset later paid Humphry to paint a large series of miniatures after the family portraits at Knole, the family seat in Sevenoaks, Kent.³

Born on April 1, 1746, to Lord John Philip Sackville and Lady Frances Leveson-Gower, Mary Sackville married Sackville Tufton, 8th Earl of Thanet on July 30, 1767, at the age of twenty-one. Lady Mary Coke wrote in a diary entry during their engagement, “Miss Sackville will soon be countess of Thanet; how happy must L[ad]y Sackville be to see her so well disposed of! Pray, when you write to her tell her I wish her most sincerely joy, for I think L[or]d Thanet a very pretty man, as well as one of the most considerable matches in England.”⁴ At the time of their marriage, the earl’s mistress, the celebrated courtesan Nelly O’Brien, was pregnant with their third child and had only recently been thrown out of Thanet’s house in Grosvenor Square. Humphry’s benefactor, Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792), painted O’Brien several times, most significantly in 1762 and 1764, before painting a full-length portrait of Thanet’s wife Mary, Countess of Thanet, in 1770–71.⁵

Humphry’s miniature of Lady Thanet dates to 1771, four years after her marriage to Tufton. Her brown hair, twined with pearls, is piled fashionably high on her head, though it is unpowdered, not unusual for the early 1770s. She wears a gown of filmy white, barely distinguishable from her flesh tones. An ermine-trimmed purple robe is draped over her left shoulder along with a braided plait. Regally posed in three-quarters view, Thanet shows off her elegant profile, sloped shoulders, columnar neck, and classical nose, recalling portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, a sometime mentor to Humphry. Humphry seems to have used the format of this miniature, particularly the sitter’s costume and pose, as a pattern for at least one unrelated portrait.⁶ She is surrounded by the barest hint of a sky background. The subtle coloring Humphry was known for is further emphasized by the loss of pigmentation in this miniature due to fading.

While the miniature is original, its locket-style case, converted from a later bracelet mount, is not Georgian and suggests something of the miniature’s little-known provenance. The case may have been cobbled together for sale sometime in the later nineteenth century. The jeweled ornaments at the top and bottom were likely incorporated at that time, perhaps taken from pieces of jewelry to add some sparkle to this faded yet refined portrait miniature.⁷

Notes

1. Of the four or more known versions, one was sold at Christie’s in 1968; one was in the collection of Daphne Foskett, on long-term loan to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh (possibly the same miniature as the version sold in the 1968 sale); one is in the collection of Lord Hothfield, Kent; and one was in the possession of J. P. Morgan, New York, which may be the one now in the Nelson-Atkins collection. An additional incomplete version is or was in the Turner collection. The sitter of a related miniature, now identified as a Miss Kennedy, formerly with Philip Mould, London, was incorrectly identified in a 2013 Bonhams sale as the Countess of Thanet. According to Bonhams, “The present image is possibly one of three portraits recorded in Humphry’s fee book, which is held by the British Museum. A signed version exists in the collection of Lord Hothfield and an unfinished replica forms part of the Turner Collection.” “Pictures, Furniture, European and Asian Works of Art,” Bonhams, November 27, 2013, lot 344, accessed December 1, 2021, https://www.bonhams.com/auction/20717/lot/344/ozias-humphry-ra-british-1742-1810-a-lady-possibly-mary-sackville-countess-of-thanet-1746-1778-wearing-white-dress-and-ermine-trimmed-plum-cloak-draped-over-her-left-shoulder-her-dark-hair-loosely-braided-and-partially-upswept/.

2. The pastel was painted after George Romney’s (English, 1734–1802) version, also at Knole. George C. Williamson, “Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s Pictures: The English Miniatures, III,” The Connoisseur 17, no. 67 (January–April 1907): 143. Humphry and Romney stopped at Knole on their way to Italy in 1773.

3. “This collection of miniatures was left by the Duke to Mr. Bayle, his chaplain at Buckhurst, on whose death it was sold.” Lionel Sackville West, Knole House: Its State Rooms, Pictures and Antiquities (Sevenoaks, Kent: J. Salmon, 1906), 87. It is not known if the other miniature versions mentioned in note 1 are connected to the Duke of Dorset’s commission for Humphry to paint a series of family portraits in miniature, but at least one of them is likely to be. However, it is doubtful that the Nelson-Atkins miniature forms part of that commission, due to its earlier date.

4. Lady Mary Campbell Coke, The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke (Bath: Lonsdale and Bartholomew, 1970), 2:72. The rather gossipy Coke had previously written in her journal on September 27, 1766, “Is it possible that Miss Sackville is going to be married to Sir Francis Molyneux? Lady Howe assures me it is all agreed. I know that he is a very good sort of Man, but is it a match answering to her expectations? Great Birth & great beauty might certainly have found something more advantageous.” Lady Mary Campbell Coke, The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1889), 1:189. Mary Sackville did indeed find an advantageous match after all, to the Earl of Thanet, at least according to the standards of Coke.

5. O’Brien also frequently served as a model for Reynolds. Thanet’s portrait is Fig. 1021 in Reynolds’s catalogue raisonné. David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (London: Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, 2000), 450.

6. Ozias Humphry, Miss Kennedy, 18th century, watercolor on ivory, 1 5/8 in. (4.2 cm) high, formerly with Philip Mould, London, accessed March 28, 2022, http://www.historicalportraits.com/Gallery.asp?Page=Item&ItemID=1718&Desc=Miss-Kennedy-%7C-Ozias-Humphry-RA.

7. According to conversations with conservator Carol Aiken during a survey of the collection March 19–23, 2018, NAMA curatorial files.

Probably Mary Sackville, Countess of Thanet (1746–1778), London, 1771;

Possibly Thomas Hugh Cobb (1863–1944), London, by 1944;

Possibly purchased at his posthumous sale, The well-known collection of fine miniatures and enamels, piqué, snuff boxes and objects of vertu, Sotheby’s, London, October 12, 1944, lot 262, by Asprey, London, 1944;

Mr. John W. (1905–2000) and Mrs. Martha Jane (1906–2011) Starr, Kansas City, MO, by 1958;

Their gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1958.

British Portrait Miniatures: An Exhibition Arranged for the Period of the Edinburgh International Festival, The Arts Council of Great Britain, Edinburgh, August 20–September 18, 1965, no. 245, as Mary, Countess of Thanet.

The well-known collection of fine miniatures and enamels, piqué, snuff boxes and objects of vertu (London: Sotheby’s, October 12, 1944).

British Portrait Miniatures: An Exhibition Arranged for the Period of the Edinburgh International Festival, exh. cat. (Edinburgh: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1965), unpaginated, (repro.), as Mary, Countess of Thanet.

Ross E. Taggart, The Starr Collection of Miniatures in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery (Kansas City, MO: Nelson Gallery-Atkins Museum, 1971), no. 69, p. 27, (repro.), as Mary, Countess of Thanet.

Daphne Foskett, A Dictionary of British Miniature Painters (New York: Praeger, 1972), 2:56, (repro.), as Mary, Countess of Thanet.

Deborah Emont Scott, ed., The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art: A Handbook of the Collection, 7th ed. (Kansas City, MO: The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 2008), 84, as Mary, Countess of Thanet.