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| Object search: lawrence |
Result 10 of 25 |
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| | Lady Jane (Maitland) Long
1793
| Sitter: Lady Jane (Maitland) Long
British, died 1833
| Maker: Thomas Lawrence
British, 1769-1830
| 30 3/8 x 25 1/8 in. (77.2 x 63.8 cm.)
| oil on canvas
| The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens. Adele S. Browning Memorial Collection, gift of Mildred Browning Green and Honorable Lucius Peyton Green
| | Lady Jane Maitland, whose date of birth is unknown, was one of nine children born to James Maitland (1718-1789), 7th Earl Lauderdale, and his wife, Mary Turner Lombe (1734-1789). On December 22, 1787 she married the wealthy merchant Samuel Long (d. 1807), eldest son and heir of Susanna Cropp and Beeston Long (1710-1745) of Carshalton, Surrey, partner in the well-known firm of West India merchants, Drake & Long. Like her eldest brother James, who gained notoriety for his flashy dress and outrageous public conduct, Lady Jane was apparently rather controversial in her dress and behavior. One acquaintance judged her to be "as violent as her Brother," and claimed that she resembled "a curious Guillotine figure" in the scanty gown she wore to a wedding tea party in March 1796, for "not only was her head made perfectly easy to cut off without obstruction of any kind, but her body dress seemed calculated for it." Lady Jane and her husband lived at Hill Street, Berkeley Square, London, and had three children. Samuel Long died on October 19, 1807, and a year later (November 5, 1808) his widow married William Houston (1766-1842), a British army colonel who had served extensively in the West Indies, Egypt, the Mediterranean, and Ireland. Lady Jane gave birth to a son in 1809, and to another in 1811. On December 25, 1810 her husband was posted to Portugal where he commanded the 7th division, returning to England the following autumn to recover from illness. On April 8, 1831, Col. Houston was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of Gibraltar. His wife accompanied him to his new post and died shortly after their arrival, on June 1, 1833.
The extreme fashionability of this portrait began with the choice of painter. Aged just twenty-four, Thomas Lawrence was already renowned for his glamorous presentation and dazzling brushwork. His painting of Lady Jane Long provides early indication of the romantic naturalism that would ultimately distinguish him and set the tone for Regency style. Seated in a landscape, she leans casually against a low wall or bench over which she has tossed a red mantel lined with white satin. Her hair is bound loosely with a white ribbon that allows several long, curling locks to cascade over her face and neck, anticipating the relaxed, neo-classical coiffures that came into general vogue some years later. The sleeves which she has pushed up above the elbow provide a further indication of informality, while also allowing Lawrence to demonstrate his skill in differentiating the opaque white material worn close to her skin from the nearly transparent muslin of her overgown. The high-waisted fitting of the sash and the loose, blouson effect of the bodice recall the drapery of Greek statuary, thereby reinforcing the neo-classical sensibility of her hairstyle.
In the background, the autumnal foliage has a fiery appearance, emphasized by the vigorous manner of Lawrence's brushwork. Although he occasionally studied the structure of trees in outdoor chalk drawings, there is no sense of structure in the foliage shown here; line surrenders to color in a bravura display of abstract painterliness. Remarkably, Lawrence managed to suggest a similar freedom and spontaneity in the depiction of the figure, even though she results from a far more laborious process. Lawrence generally began his portraits with a detailed chalk sketch executed directly on the canvas during the first two-hour sitting. This was an unusual practice among British artists which, according to Sir Gilbert Elliot (who sat to Lawrence in May 1792), enabled the artist to "make out the likeness completely before he begins to paint." In the actual paint application, Lawrence masked his painstaking methods through conspicuous flourishes suggestive of ease, such as the shimmering white satin ribbons that float about the sitter's torso, and the splash of yellow paint at her waist. One contemporary critic praised such passages as "very clear and crisp in the touch."
The apparent spontaneity of Lawrence's handling matches the air of relaxed informality expressed by the sitter herself. However, the lack of academic training that lies behind his brisk, painterly style also resulted in a deficient command of anatomy. In the present instance, this is obvious in the unconvincing structure of the raised right arm and the unattractively cropped left arm--a timid evasion of painting the hand. To greater effect, Lawrence has artificially elongated the curving column of his sitter's neck, accentuating its sleek silhouette with a subtle brown outline that is offset at left by a splash of yellow paint denoting the autumnal foliage in the background.
Lawrence painted Lady Jane Long at a crucial moment in his career, during the final months of his unofficial campaign for election to the Royal Academy of Arts. In February 1794 he narrowly defeated John Hoppner by a margin of two votes. This hard-won victory failed to satisfy Lawrence's ambition, which had been fueled by early predictions of his inevitable rise to the Academy presidency. Troubled by a perceived decline in his abilities, he agonized over his contributions to the Academy exhibition of 1796 which he hoped "wd. restore his reputation." Among the paintings exhibited was this portrait of Lady Jane Long, commenced and paid for three years earlier. On seeing Lawrence's portraits on the Academy walls prior to the opening of the exhibition, Benjamin West made some suggestions for alterations which Lawrence, plagued by insecurity, reportedly carried out. In the case of the present portrait, the amendment was slight and evidently ephemeral. West himself is said to have brushed a little watercolor over one of the arms, a technique he attributed to Leonardo da Vinci. Technical analysis of the picture has revealed no surviving evidence of West's alteration.
The rural setting of this portrait, in combination with the sitter's neo-classical manner of dress, lends Lady Jane Long the charming air of a Greek nymph or shepherdess. By representing his wealthy, aristocratic subject free from the material trappings of her position and entirely at ease in a pastoral setting, Lawrence reiterated a theme that had recurred in British art since Anthony Van Dyck painted the courtiers of Charles I as Arcadian shepherds and shepherdesses. As there, allusions to nature and antiquity are intended to imbue this portrait with a charming air of fantasy, while also suggesting that we see the sitter as she essentially is, stripped of artificial fashion and manners. This conceit is itself a fashionable mannerism, of course, made all the more so by the deliciously suave and glamorous flourishes of Lawrence's brush.
|  | | | Accession No. 78.20.32
| Provenance:
The sitter's son, Samuel Long; to his daughter, Mary Euphemia Long (Mrs. Hugh Elliot); Elliot sale, Sotheby's, February 13, 1935 (134), purchased by Ernest Permain on behalf of William Randolph Hearst; with Agnew; purchased by Mildred Browning Green and Honorable Lucius Peyton Green of Los Angeles, 1952; their bequest to The Huntington, 1978
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