Footnotes

Provenance
Sale; Christie's, London, 12 November 1982, lot 35
Private Collection
With Oriel Gallery, Dublin, circa 1996
Sale; Alderfer Auction, Hatfield, 12 December 2019, lot 3331 (as Portrait of a Woman), where acquired by the present owner
Private Collection, Ireland

When he painted the present study of the Hon. Mrs Burrell in 1903, Lavery was already familiar with his subject. In the previous year he had painted a seated portrait for which a head study was also produced. The reasons for the second commission remain obscure but may have been occasioned by the sitter's husband's wish for a grand full-length portrait to grace his family's estate in Wales (Anne Selby Burrell Ord, later Lady Gwydyr, 1903, Private Collection). The present study relates to this commission.

The daughter of John Ord, a farmer, Anne Selby Ord, later Lady Gwydyr (1870-1910), was born at Overwhitton in Roxburghshire. She married the Hon Willoughby Merrik Campbell Burrell, (1841-1915) the widower son of the 4th Baron Gwydyr, on 4 June 1901, at St. Michael's Church, Chester Square, London. Although the Burrell family seat was in Caernarvonshire, the couple lived in London and at their Stoke Park estate at Ipswich, where her husband was a captain of the Rifle Brigade and honorary colonel of the Suffolk Regiment. As with other wealthy aristocratic wives, the Hon. Mrs Burrell featured regularly in society pages where, as a keen golfer, she was reported on the Ladies Links at North Berwick. In 1906 she made the tabloids when on a balloon trip over London, she was caught in a snowstorm at 4000 feet.

Upon completion of a commission, Lavery would often present his female sitters with an oil sketch, produced as part of the planning process for an important portrait. Often these small, vivid perceptions – the product of a 'glimpse' rather than a 'gaze' – have an immediacy that appealed to the subject on a more personal level than the more formal full- or three-quarter length demanded by her husband. This is the case with the present portrait of the Hon. Mrs Burrell. Like many works of this type, it is spontaneous and impromptu. That it is inscribed 'with many thanks', suggests that as he worked on the Burrell portraits, Lavery was entertained by the sitter and her husband, and may indeed have stayed with them at Stoke Park or been entertained at their house in Pont Street, Knightsbridge.

We are grateful to Professor Kenneth McConkey for compiling this catalogue entry.