Jacob Huysmans, 
Flemish c.1633-1696- 
Portrait of Lady Anne Home, Countess of Lauderdale,...

Jacob Huysmans, 
Flemish c.1633-1696- 

Portrait of Lady Anne Home, Countess of Lauderdale, three-quarter length, seated, wearing a black dress and embroidered shawl, holding a lemon; 

oil on canvas, 124.6 x 102.5 cm. 

Provenance: 
Peter Morris Esq. of Yester House sale, Sotheby's, London, 28 November 1973, lot 11 (as 'Sir Peter Lely'). 
Property of the late Hugo Morley-Fletcher, MA FSA (1940-2022). 

Exhibited: 
Edinburgh, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 'Women in Scotland 1660-1780', 1979, no.38 (as 'Sir Peter Lely'). 

Note: 
The present work was painted in c.1665. A second autograph version was in the Duke of Rothes's collection at Leslie House in Fife, and Huysmans repeated the composition for a portrait of another sitter, now in the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI.550) (there incorrectly identified as by the landscape painter Cornelius Huysmans). 

In 1632 Anne Home (1612-1671) married John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1616-1682), who was later raised by Charles II to the rank of Duke and given what amounted to vice-regal powers in Scotland. Lady Anne married Lauderdale at the age of fifteen and together they had one child, a daughter. 'During the Commonwealth period, when Lauderdale was imprisoned in the Tower of London, his wife visited him faithfully and when it was decided that he should be moved to even stricter confinement in Warwick Castle he was able to report, ‘I bless God my wife prevailed to get the order recalled.' After the Restoration they lived together at Highgate House in London, which Lady Anna had inherited from her mother. When Pepys visited them there in 1666, he found Lauderdale at supper with 'his Lady and some Scotch people'' (Scottish National Portrait Gallery, ‘Women in Scotland 1660-1780' exhibition catalogue, pp.34-35).

Huysmans was a Flemish portrait painter who, after training in his native Antwerp, immigrated to England before the Restoration. He became a feted court painter and attracted the patronage of the Portuguese born queen Catherine of Braganza, wife of King Charles II and a Catholic like himself, of whom he painted several portraits. With his exuberant style, he was during his lifetime regarded as an important rival of the court painter Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680) who favoured a more sober treatment of his sitters.