Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740 - 1808)
Portrait of Lady Caroline Spencer (1763 - 1813)
Oval, pastel on paper, 23.5 x 19cm (9¼ x 7½")
Signed indistinctly LL, inscribed verso and with a trade...

Hugh Douglas Hamilton (1740 - 1808)
Portrait of Lady Caroline Spencer (1763 - 1813)
Oval, pastel on paper, 23.5 x 19cm (9¼ x 7½")
Signed indistinctly LL, inscribed verso and with a trade label for 'Royal County Depository, Reading, C &G Ayers, Ltd' and inscribed thereon 'Viscountess Churchill'

Provenance: By direct descent from the sitter to Victor, 3rd Viscount Churchill (1934-2017); With Guy Peppiatt Fine Art, London; Private collection, Dublin.

Exhibited: London, Society of Artists, 1775, no.108

This particularly charming pastel portrait by Hugh Douglas Hamilton shows the young Caroline Spencer, the oldest daughter of George Spencer Churchill, 4th Duke of Marlborough (1739-1817) and his wife Caroline Russell (d.1811). This portrait dates from 1775 when she was twelve. It was exhibited at the Society of Artists, in London 1775. Subsequently Caroline married Henry Henry Welbore Agar, 2nd Viscount Clifden (1761-1836) of Gowran Castle, Co. Kilkenny in 1792. The ducal connection and the young brides attraction were commented on back in Ireland: I am not surprised that the Viscount has been inveigled by the splendour of Blenheim and the charms of his amiable wife to delay his journey to Bath (Cited Anthony Malcomson, Archbishop Charles Agar Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760-1810, Dublin, 2002, 513). This was a truly splendid match for the Irishman and was likely facilitated by his influential kinsman Archbishop Charles Agar. Caroline, Anthony Malcomson writes, was a strong-minded young lady who had already turned down, two much better offers(ibid.). She had, in fact, broken off engagements with both George Leveson- Gower, Viscount Trentham, and George Gordon, Lord Strathavaon. A decade or so after she sat for Hamilton as a child, Caroline, and her sister Elizabeth, were painted by George Romney in a famous composition showing the former sketching the latter playing the harp. Though the Romney portrait was commissioned by the sitters father it descended in the Cliften family until 1896. When it was sold by Joseph Duveen to Henry Huntington it was the third most expensive painting ever sold in Britain (Huntington Library, San Marino, CA). Caroline died back home at Blenheim Castle in November 1813 and was buried in the family vault of the Dukes of Marlborough, next to her mother. Unlike the Romney, the pastel descended within the Churchill family until recently.

 

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