Portrait of Lady Frances Fitzroy, nee Mundy

ca. 1795

A half-length portrait of Lady Charles Fitzroy, nee Frances Mundy (1773-1797), wearing a white dress and a blue headdress. The painting is in an elaborately carved and gilded wood frame.

John Hoppner, the successor to the aristocratic British portrait painting tradition of Sir Joshua Reynolds and a rival to Sir Thomas Lawrence, was a favorite of Doris Duke's parents James B. and Nanaline Duke. By the time they purchased this half-length portrait in 1923, they already owned four other Hoppner portraits. Their first - the portrait of the young Charles Oldfield Bowles (son of the painter, Oldfield Bowles, 1739-1810) - was purchased at auction (Christie's) in 1907.

Frances, daughter of Edward Miller Mundy (d. 1822), was born in 1773 in Shipley in Derbyshire, in the East-Midlands of England. In 1795 she married General Lord Charles Fitzroy (1764-1829), the 2nd son of the 3rd Duke of Grafton. Their only child, Sir Augustus Charles Fitzroy (1796-1858), served as Governor-General of British colonies in Canada (Prince Edward Island, 1837-1841) and Australia (New South Wales, 1846-1855).

This portrait remained in the artist's studio after his death, which suggests the sitter might have died before the portrait was completed.

English

oil on canvas, in carved and gilded wood frame

Overall: 37 x 4 x 42 in. (94 x 10.2 x 106.7 cm)
Sight: 30 x 25 in. (76.2 x 63.5 cm)

Sold at the artist's sale after his death, May 31, 1823. Purchased from M. Knoedler & Co., New York, NY, April 4, 1923, by J.B. Duke for his house at 1 East 78th, New York, NY; by inheritance to Doris Duke, 1925; from 1957, at Rough Point, Newport, RI.

1999.940