Lady Frances (Finch) Courtenay

Maker Thomas Hudson (British, 1701-1779)

SitterSitter: Lady Frances (Finch) Courtenay (British, 1721 - 1761)

Collections

British Painting Highlights

ClassificationsPAINTINGS

Dateca. 1741

Mediumoil on canvas

Dimensions50 1/4 x 40 in. (127.6 x 101.6 cm.) frame: 58 1/4 × 48 1/2 × 3 1/2 in. (148 × 123.2 × 8.9 cm.)

DescriptionIn this portrait, Lady Frances Courtenay is standing in an open landscape at sunset holding a long white feather in her left hand.

Credit LineThe Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens. Bequest of Florence M. Quinn

Status

On view

Label TextThis portrait of Lady Frances Courtenay is modeled on Peter Paul Rubens’s portrait of his wife Helena Fourment (ca. 1630–1632), which became one of the most admired portraits in mid-18th-century Britain. Rubens’s image of Helena inspired other artists’ portraits of married women in the “Rubens’s Wife” mode, such as this painting, and also became a reference for costumes at masked balls. While Hudson refers to Rubens’s portrait in the sitter’s dress, pose, setting, and accessories, he relaxed and lowered the position of the sitter’s arms, and included aspects of contemporary fashion. For example, Courtenay’s hair is pulled straight back from her forehead, a hairstyle popular during the 1740s.

Bibliography

British paintings at the Huntington

Object number44.100