Portrait of Emily St. Clare as a Bacchante
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The Royal Academy Exhibition, Somerset House, London, 1807, no. 59, as Portrait of a Lady.
The Second Loan Exhibition of Old Masters: British Paintings of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, The Detroit Institute of the Arts, January 18-31, 1926, no. 12, as A Young Girl with Tambourine.
The Stotesbury Collection, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Philadelphia, June 13-December 1932, as Tambourine Girl.
Exhibition of Paintings and Works of Art from the Collection of the Late Edward T. Stotesbury, James St. L. O’Toole Galleries, Inc., New York, April 23-May 10, 1941; Masterpieces of English Portraiture: An exhibition of paintings by Romney, Raeburn, Hoppner and Lawrence from the Collection of the Late Edward T. Stotesbury, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, San Francisco, June 25-August 10, 1941, no. 5, as Tambourine Girl.
Picture-of-the-Month, Philbrook Art Center, Tulsa, February-March 2, 1947, as The Tambourine Girl.
The Century of Mozart, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, January 15-March 4, 1956, no. 55, as The Tambourine Girl.
In this portrait, Emily St. Clare invites the viewer into the world of a bacchante, or follower of Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Intoxicated by her beauty, St. Clare was the mistress of Sir John Fleming Leicester, who commissioned this and at least 13 other portraits of her from fashionable British artists.
John Hoppner was known for his restrained, formal portraits. Here, however, in striving to fulfill Leicester’s desires, Hoppner conveyed St. Clare’s youthfulness and exuberance through dynamic brushwork, flowing draperies, and an alluring smile.
Commissioned from the artist by Sir John Fleming Leicester, Baronet, 1st Baron de Tabley (1762-1827), London and Cheshire, England, 1807-1827;
His posthumous sale, Pictures, Drawings, Prints, Christie’s, London, April 19, 1828, lot 136, as Portrait of a Lady in a Dancing Attitude;
Sir Edward Sullivan, 2nd Baronet, Lord High Commissioner of Ireland (1852-1928), by July 19, 1895;
Purchased from Sullivan by P. and D. Colnaghi, London, stock no. 227, July 19, 1895-July 20, 1895;
Purchased from Colnaghi by Alfred A. de Pass (1861-1953), Devonshire, England, July 20, 1895-at least 1914;
With Thomas Agnew and Sons, London, stock no. 5815, May 14, 1920-May 17, 1920 [1];
Purchased from Agnew by Duveen Brothers, Paris, Paris stock book 10, 1920-1921, no. 4554, May 17, 1920-October 30, 1920;
Purchased from Duveen by Edward Townsend Stotesbury (1849-1938), Whitemarsh Hall, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania, October 30, 1920-1938;
Stotesbury estate, 1938-1944;
Purchased at its sale, British XVIII Century Portraits from the Collection of the Late Edward T. Stotesbury, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, November 18, 1944, lot 13, by French & Co., New York, stock no. 77266, on joint account with an unknown foreign dealer, 1944 [2];
Purchased from French & Co. by Robert Lehman (1892-1969), New York, November 24, 1944-1945;
His gift to The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO, 1945.
NOTES:
[1] The National Gallery, London, Thomas Agnew and Sons Ltd. Archive, NGA27/1, stock books. An Agnew label with the sale date is on the back of the painting.
[2] According to Mitchell Samuels, French & Co., in a letter to J. C. Nichols, November 28, 1944, NAMA Archives, French & Company “bought this picture with a foreign dealer.” There is no indication of joint ownership or the name of this other dealer on the French & Co. stock sheet, Getty Research Library, French & Co. Stock Sheets, box 75, folder 3.
“Gallery of English Paintings Belonging to Sir John Leicester, Bart.,” The Artist; A Collection of Essays, Relative to Painting, Poetry, Sculpture, Architecture, The Drama, Discoveries of Science, and Various Other Subjects, no. 12 (May 30, 1807): 18, as Lady dancing, in Turkish Costume.
The Royal Academy Exhibition, exh. cat. (London: Royal Academy, 1807), as Portrait of a Lady.
Catalogue of the Works of English Artists in the Gallery of Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart. (London: S. Gosnell, 1817), 15, as Portrait of a Lady Dancing.
William Carey, Esq., A Descriptive Catalogue of a Collection of Paintings by British Artists in the Possession of Sir John Fleming Leicester, Bart. (London: J Nichols and Son, 1819), 143, as A Lady Dancing.
Pictures, drawings, prints (London: Christie, Manson, and Woods, 1828), 10, as Portrait of a Lady in a dancing attitude, treated with great taste, and coloured with great richness and harmony.
Martin Conway, Great Masters, 1400-1800: Reproductions in Photogravure from the Finest Works of the Most Famous Painters Down to the Year 1800 with an Introduction and Text (London: Heinemann, 1903), (repro.).
H[orace] P[itt] K[ennedy] Skipton, John Hoppner (London: Methuen, 1905): 137, 176.
William McKay and W. Roberts, John Hoppner, R.A.: New Edition with Supplement and Index (London: John Lane and Bodley Head, 1914), 226-27, 286, 319, as Girl with Tambourine.
The Second Loan Exhibition of Old Masters: British Paintings of the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, exh. cat. (Detroit: Detroit Institute of Arts, 1926), as A Young Girl with Tambourine.
“Stotesbury’s Loan,” The Art Digest 6 (July 1, 1932): 13, as Tambourine Girl.
“Pennsylvania Has Stotesbury Loans,” The Art News (August 13, 1932): as Tambourine Girl.
The Connoisseur (October 1932): 281.
Henri Marceau, “The Stotesbury Collection: British Portraits,” The Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin 28, no. 151 (December 1932), 21, as Tambourine Girl.
Pennsylvania Museum of Art: Fifty-sixth Annual Report (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania Museum of Art, 1932), 17, as Tambourine Girl.
C. H. Collins Baker, British Painting (Boston: Hale, Cushman and Flint, 1933), 280, as The Tambourine Girl.
Exhibition of Paintings and Works of Art from the Collection of the Late Edward T. Stotesbury, exh. cat. (New York: James St. L. O’Toole Galleries, 1941), (repro.), as The Tambourine Girl.
Masterpieces of English Portraiture: An exhibition of paintings by Romney, Raeburn, Hoppner and Lawrence from the Collection of the Late Edward T. Stotesbury, exh. cat (San Francisco: California Palace of the Legion of Honor, 1941).
“Stotesbury Collection,” The Art Digest (May 1, 1941): 8, as Tambourine Girl.
“Stotesbury Art Goes West.” The Art Digest (June 1, 1941): 19.
The Connoisseur 108 (August 1941): 79.
British XVIII Century Portraits by Romney, Hoppner, Lawrence, Raeburn; Two Salon Suites in Aubusson and Royal Beauvais Tapestry, A Series of Beauvais Chinoiserie, Tapestries after Boucher, Chinese Porcelains, An Ispahan Palace Carpet: From the Collection of the Late Edward T. Stotesbury, Philadelphia (New York: Parke-Bernet Galleries, 1944), 26-27, (repro.), as The Tambourine Girl.
“Eighteenth Century Art: The Stotesbury Sale,” Art News 43, no. 14 (November 1-14, 1944): 28-29, as The Tambourine Girl.
“Masterpiece of the Month,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 2, no. 7 (April 1945): 4-5, as The Tambourine Girl.
“Gallery Changes,” Gallery News (The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts) 2, no. 8 (May 1945): 6, as The Tambourine Girl.
“A Gift to Art: Robert Lehman of New York Sends Painting Here,” [unknown newspaper possibly Kansas City Star] (April 1, 1945): (repro.), clipping in NAMA curatorial file, as The Tambourine Girl.
“Hoppner’s ‘Tambourine Girl’ to Nelson Gallery,” [unknown newspaper possibly Kansas City Star] (May 5, 1945), clipping in NAMA curatorial file, as Tambourine Girl.
“The Tambourine Girl,” Tulsa Daily World (February 23, 1947): (repro.), clipping in NAMA curatorial file, as The Tambourine Girl.
The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, The William Rockhill Nelson Collection, 3rd ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1949), 84-85, (repro.), as Tambourine Girl.
Patrick J. Kelleher, “The Century of Mozart: January 15 through March 4, 1956,” exh. cat., Bulletin (The Nelson Gallery and Atkins Museum) 1, no. 1 (January 1956): 14, 28, as The Tambourine Girl.
Ross E. Taggart, ed., Handbook of the Collections in the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 4th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1959), 131, (repro.), as The Tambourine Girl.
Gerald Reitlinger, The Economics of Taste: The Rise and Fall of the Picture Market, 1760-1960 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961), 195, as Girl with a Tambourine.
Francis Wormald, et. al., The Thirty-Eighth Volume of the Walpole Society, 1960-1962 (Glasgow: The University Press, 1962), 80, 115, as A Lady Dancing.
Ross E. Taggart and George L. McKenna, eds., Handbook of the Collections in The William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, Kansas City, Missouri, vol. 1, Art of the Occident, 5th ed. (Kansas City, MO: William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of Art and Mary Atkins Museum of Fine Arts, 1973), 146, (repro.), as The Tambourine Girl.
Edward Fowles, Memories of Duveen Brothers (London: Times Books, 1976), 137, as Girl Dancing with a Tambourine.
Robert H. Terte, “The Phenomenal Nelson Gallery,” Antiques World 1, no. 3 (January 1979): 50, (repro.), as The Tambourine Girl.
Kathryn Cave, ed., The Diary of Joseph Farington (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 9:3443, 10:3836, as Whole Length Portrait of Miss Sinclair.
William Bouguereau, 1825-1905, exh. cat. (Montreal: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 1984): 137-138, (repro.), as Young Girl with Tambourine.
John Wilson, “Hoppner’s ‘tambourine girl’ identified,” The Burlington Magazine 130, no. 1027 (October 1988): 763-767, (repro.), as ‘The tambourine girl’: Emily St. Clare as a bacchante.
John Wilson, “London: Paintings from Tabley,” The Burlington Magazine 131, no. 1041 (December 1989): 861.
