Portrait of Lady Frederick Campbell (Countess Ferrers) with a spaniel

Details

Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (Suffolk 1727-1788 London)
Portrait of Lady Frederick Campbell (Countess Ferrers) with a spaniel
oil on canvas
30¼ x 25 in. (76.8 x 63.5 cm.)

Provenance

Lady Frederick Campbell, and by descent to her sister
Viscountess Curzon, and by descent to her stepson
Lord Curzon, and by descent to his great-grandson
Lord Zouche, 1863.
with Lewis and Simmons, London.
with Agnew's, London, 1912, where purchased by Gerard Lee Bevan.
Mrs. Gerard Lee Bevan, London; Christie's, London, 11 May 1923, lot 90.
with Agnew's, London.
with John Levy, New York, 1924.
with Howard Young, New York, 1924-1925.
Arthur J. Secor by 1925, by whom gifted in 1933 to the Toledo Museum of Art.

Literature

B.M. Godwin, Catalogue of European Paintings, Toledo, 1939, pp. 288-289.
E.K. Waterhouse, 'Preliminary Check List of Portraits by Thomas Gainsborough,' The Annual Volume of the Walpole Society, XXXIII, Oxford, 1953, p. 17.
E.K. Waterhouse, Gainsborough, London, 1958, p. 58.
M. F. Rogers Jr., 'Gentlemen and Gentry,' Toledo Museum News, III, no. 2, Spring 1960, p. 30.
The Toledo Museum of Art: European Paintings, Toledo, 1976, p. 61, pl. 315.
J. D. Morse, Old Master Paintings in North America, New York, 1979, p. 136.

Exhibited

Cleveland Museum of Art, Inaugural Exhibition, 6 June-20 September 1916, no. 5.
Toledo Museum of Art, Portraits and Portraiture Throughout the Ages, 3-31 October 1937, no. 21.

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Lot Essay

Mary Meredith (1727-1807) was the youngest daughter of Amos Meredith of Henbury, Cheshire. A woman of great beauty, in 1752 Mary married Lawrence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferres (1720-1760). Though intelligent, Lord Ferres suffered from fits of insanity, drank excessively, kept a mistress and was prone to violence. Unwilling to live under such conditions, Mary was granted a separate maintenance by act of parliament in 1758. During one of Lord Ferres' episodes in 1760, he murdered his land-steward Mr. Johnson, who had been placed in charge of ensuring that Mary received an income. Lord Ferres was tried in Westminster Hall and executed. Mary later remarried in March 1769, the Scottish nobleman and politician, Lord Frederick Campbell (1729-1816), brother of the 4th Duke of Argyll. Lord Frederick was M.P. for the Glasgow burghs from 1761 to 1780 and for the county of Argyll from 1780-1799. In 1768, he was made lord clerk register for Scotland, and held many other political posts throughout his life.

We are grateful to Hugh Belsey for his thoughts on the painting and for suggesting it dates from c. 1772.

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