Completed Portraits: British 16th and 17th C 53 Is this painting after van Dyck, or perhaps even by him? Is the sitter Penelope, Lady Herbert (1620-1647) or someone else?

NOT_NCMG_NA_511-001.jpg
Topic: Artist

This picture cannot be by Michael Dahl, who was born after the sitter died. The picture is much more likely to be after van Dyck, if not by him. There is an engraving (c.1650) by Pierre Lombard after a van Dyck painting of this sitter, which closely resembles this picture.

The lettered engraving, c.1650, by Pierre Lombard.
https://bit.ly/2P81V4s

The engraving is after an apparently lost van Dyck of which a good period copy exists:

Circle of Sir Anthony van Dyck, ‘Portrait of Lady Penelope Herbert’, oil on canvas, 124.8 x 97.7 cm.
https://bit.ly/2MnRUBI

Comparing this to the Newstead picture, the pose is nearly identical and the dress is very similar, but the faces differ, and the Newstead lady appears to have darker hair (she has some resemblance to Queen Henrietta Maria). This suggests the Newstead lady may not, in fact, be Lady Penelope Herbert but someone else, albeit certainly a contemporary.

Regardless of the sitter's identity, the Newstead picture is clearly in the style of van Dyck, and I absolutely do not believe it is by or after Dahl, who is a later painter whose work is much closer to Kneller.

Jacinto Regalado, Entry reviewed by Art UK

Completed, Outcome

This discussion is now closed. It has not been possible to identify either artist or sitter conclusively. The record for the artist has been amended to ‘Anthony van Dyck (follower of)’, the title updated to ‘Portrait of a Lady (previously identified as Penelope, Lady Herbert, 1620–1647)’, and the picture dated to the late 1630s/early 1640s.

Thank you to everyone who contributed to the discussion. To anyone viewing this discussion for the first time, please see below for all the comments that led to this conclusion.

52 comments

Jacinto, thank you for your email link to the double portrait of Penelope and her first husband Viscount Bayning, recorded as School of Anthony van Dyck. Perhaps this link will work:
https://bit.ly/2MsMtBj

There is also the portrait at Burghley House: Joan Carlisle, ‘Penelope, Lady Herbert’ after Sir Anthony van Dyck, oil on panel, 30.5 x 24.1 cm. Burghley House, Stamford. Formerly attributed to Edmund Ashfield (active c.1660–c.1690).
https://bit.ly/2vJMuat

For comparison, a link to the half-length painting sold at Christie’s Old Master and British Paintings Evening Sale, London, 7 July 2016 (with an excellent zoom of the image, showing brushwork): Sir Anthony van Dyck, ‘Portrait of a Lady, believed to be Penelope, Lady Bayning (1620–1647), later Lady Herbert, half-length, in a blue satin gown’, c.1637–1638, oil on canvas, 77 x 64.5 cm.
https://bit.ly/2MQlwV1

There can be little doubt that this can be described as 'After van Dyck', given the engraving by Lombart, the near contemporary copy at Burghley and the inclusion of the original as a lost painting by van Dyck in Susan Barnes et al. Van Dyck: A Complete Catalogue of the Paintings, 2004. I came to the same conclusion recently while writing an entry on it for NICE Paintings. It would be interesting to know if Susan Barnes or her collaborators saw the Nottingham painting; it is not referred to in their catalogue entry.

The difference in hair style and colour and, arguably, face certainly raise the question of the identification of the sitter.

S. Elin Jones,

Have you seen the portrait of Dorothy Sidney, Countess of Sunderland c1650 at Carmarthenshire County Museum?
Another portrait after Van Dyke

If you overlay the painting in question over the Carmarthenshire one there are many points that are increadibly similar with regards to areas such as the back of the neck and breast area, earrings, folds in many areas.

Jacinto Regalado,

Unlike the known portraits of Lady Herbert, the Newstead lady has a more "French" face with more languid eyes, and her hair is clearly darker and softer, or less tightly curled, and done in a somewhat different style. At least to my eye, she looks like another woman.

It would be of interest to learn the basis or source for the current identification of this sitter, assuming the staff at Newstead Abbey know that. Also, since Penelope, Lady Herbert married the 5th Earl of Pembroke, perhaps someone on the staff at Wilton House, the seat of the Herberts, might care to comment on the likelihood that the Newstead lady could conceivably be Lady Herbert.

Jacinto Regalado,

Since Newstead Abbey is the ancestral home of Lord Byron, one possibility is that the sitter is a lady of the Byron family, such as Cecilia West (died 1638), the first wife of John, the 1st Baron Byron and a Royalist figure. That possibility becomes especially plausible if this is a potential family portrait which has long been at Newstead, which perhaps the Abbey staff can shed light upon.

The ArtUK entry for this picture says it was a gift from Charles Ian Fraser in 1931, the year Newstead Abbey was presented to the Nottingham City Council by a local philanthropist, Sir Julien Cahn, who had bought the estate from Fraser (who had inherited it, possibly including the picture in question).

Howard Jones,

As Mr E Jones notes the painting of Lady Dorothy Sidney
in the Carmarthen Museum closely matches the Newstead portrait. They are two versions of the same picture.
Lady Dorothy Countess of Sunderland, 1617 - 1684, was the daughter of the Earl of Leicester and of Dorothy Percy. There are numerous paintings of Dorothy Sydney including an original by Van Dyck at her home at Petworth. In the Petworth portrait, the Newstead portrait and the Carmarthen portrait the sitters are all shown wearing distinctive double oversized glass pearl earrings.
There are numerous additional pictures of the Countess of Sunderland, and a check on all this portraiture should confirm whether she is also portrayed in the Newstead painting.

Jacinto Regalado,

I do not agree that the picture linked by E Jones above matches the Newstead picture. The faces are quite different and the hair is completely different.

Jacinto Regalado,

Another possibility is that this might be a French lady in the entourage of Queen Henrietta Maria, though that is decidedly speculative.

Jacinto Regalado,

If only out of curiosity, I should be interested to know the source of the attribution to Michael Dahl, surely wrong though it appears.

Howard Jones,

Computer glitch above. Only one image appeared on Mr E Jones's attachment so I was comparing the Newstead portrait with the Newstead portrait which would explain the close match. Secondly the double oversized earrings seem to have been warn by most of the English Ladies in his portraits.
Many of the subjects by Van Dyck or after Van Dyck were shown in similar poses perhaps his workshop contained stencils. Well not but many of these women have very similar hair and clothes and identical style of earrings.
Some not dissimilar Anne Boteler, Lucy Hay Countess of Carlisle, and some of the Villiers family but need to keep looking a bit longer.

Jacinto Regalado,

Comparisons to other women painted by van Dyck are certainly warranted, but that would only help if this particular lady was painted by him more than once, which may not be the case.

Jacinto Regalado,

I should very much like to know the opinion of Bendor Grosvenor on the picture under discussion, given his prior experience with works by van Dyck.

Jacinto Regalado,

The pictures at Newstead Abbey include two copies after van Dyck identified as such, both of which (like the portrait under discussion) were gifts from Charles Ian Fraser in 1931:

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/thomas-howard-15851646-earl-of-arundel-and-his-son-lord-maltravers-16071624-47849/search/venue:newstead-abbey-4206/page/4/view_as/grid

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/lady-elizabeth-thimbelby-and-dorothy-viscountess-andover-47802/search/venue:newstead-abbey-4206/page/4/view_as/grid

They strike me as less fine (or perhaps in poorer condition) than the purported portrait of Lady Herbert, and possibly later as opposed to period copies (especially the double female portrait, which is vaguely redolent of Greuze).

Interestingly, Newstead also houses what can be taken for a real portrait by Michael Dahl, dated ca. 1720:

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/frances-lady-byron-d-1757-third-wife-of-the-4th-lord-byron-47810/search/venue:newstead-abbey-4206/page/4/view_as/grid

Jacinto Regalado,

For what it may be worth, while the best-known picture at Newstead Abbey is bound to be an 1813 portrait of Lord Byron by Thomas Phillips (which I prefer to his "Albanian" Byron at the NPG), the portrait under discussion here is arguably the best picture there.

James Fairhead,

Forgive a little lateral thinking. Perhaps the mistake is with the attribution on the engraving of ‘Lady Penelope Herbert’ and with subsequent attributions linked to it.
I want to float the idea that the face in the engraving (see the link Jacinto added in the original question) is of a different Lady Herbert, not ‘Lady Penelope Herbert’ (as it is certainly captioned, who was the countess of Pembroke Wife of 5th Earl of Pembroke; daughter of Sir Robert Naunton) but the Lady Herbert, who was Mary Villiers (daughter of the George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Katherine Manners, 19th Baroness de Ros). Mary Villiers became Lady Herbert when she was married as a child to Charles, Lord Herbert, but Charles died a year later, aged 15. Yet Mary Villiers was still known as ‘Lady Herbert’ even after she remarried. There are endless portraits of her (several masterpieces by Van Dyck, and she is foregrounded in the Wilton House family portrait of the Herberts). Many of these portraits look strikingly similar to the portrait in question. As there are so many images of Mary Villiers on the net, I’ll not illustrate the likenesses.
What I am suggesting that actually there may be NO definitive images of Lady Penelope Herbert against which to judge the portrait in question to be her, and that this is perhaps also a portrait of Mary Villiers. Of course a critic may say: there are many other portraits named ‘Lady Penelope Herbert’, but I would retort (for the purposes of airing this argument at least) that all these are actually either denoted ‘Lady Herbert’ (leaving attribution ambiguous) or are later attributions in which the identity has been given through comparison with the etching by Pierre Lombart. That Lombart may have painted the wrong face goes back to the confusion of there being two Lady Herberts. He was also working from a portrait in the 1660s long after the death of Lady Penelope Herbert, and there is nothing to suggest that his engravings of a clutch of countesses was linked to commissions by their families. Now an astute critic of this hypothesis would say: But there is also a portrait of ‘Lady Penelope Naunton Herbert and her husband, Paul Bayning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viscount_Bayning . The link to this was given above by Marion Richards. Yet this portrait’s composition is entirely derivative of (copied from) Van Dyck’s ‘Lady Thimbleby and her sister https://colourlex.com/project/van-dyck-lady-thimbelby-dorothy-viscountess-andover/ . This composition is not a ‘wife and husband’ composition, but a classic ‘friendship’ composition (associated with the wrenching apart of sibilings at an impending marriage. At least this is the argument forwarded by Liedtke and Safer in the Burlington Magazine, see: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40480057?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
So again, there is a fair chance that this so-called husband and wife picture has been misidentified in later years probably also on the basis of the etching, and is actually of Mary Villiers and one of her brothers (perhaps her brother killed in the Civil War, Lord Francis Villiers with this later picture commemorating him) . Of course this could all be wrong, but it is worth contemplating.

Jacinto Regalado,

Those are interesting considerations, James, but the British Museum and the National Portrait Gallery accept the Pierre Lombart engraving as being of Penelope (his famous "Countesses" series includes two earls, one of whom is Philip Herbert, who married her). There is a copy of van Dyck's lost original portrait of Penelope in Wilton House, which unfortunately I cannot find online, but it is apparently accepted as such by Susan Barnes and presumably matches other copies of the same original which have been linked above (as I said previously, input from Wilton House would be most welcome in this discussion).

However, regardless of whether Lombart engraved a portrait of Penelope Herbert or Mary Villiers (who was not a countess but a duchess by then, and identified as such in a roughly contemporary engraving of her by Hollar), the fact remains that the Newstead lady does not look like portraits said to be of either Lady Herbert.

Jacinto Regalado,

It may be worth noting that Penelope, Lady Herbert (née Naunton), albeit the first wife of Philip Herbert, who became the 5th Earl of Pembroke in 1649, was never actually Countess of Pembroke, since she died in or before 1647.

Jacinto Regalado,

I consulted the complete catalogue of van Dyck's paintings (published by Yale in 2004), which proved quite helpful. The chief points of interest are summarized below:

In addition to the known portrait of Lady Herbert engraved by Lombart, of which at least two period copies exist (both linked above, and both with solid dark backgrounds), there are three other female portraits of the same (3/4) format and more or less the same pose, one set in an interior (at Althorp) and two in a landscape (both in the Buccleuch collection, presumably at Boughton House). All four are dated ca. 1636-1639. None of these portraits matches the face of the Newstead lady, and only the one of Lady Herbert matches her dress (albeit with different coloring). No reference is made in the catalogue to the Newstead picture, and of course no image of it is included.

The lost 3/4 portrait of Lady Herbert engraved by Lombart is thought to have been painted ca. 1636-1637, while she was still Lady Bayning, and it is different from the portrait of Lady Herbert at Wilton House, which is dated ca. 1639 and is full-length and set in an interior, with a different pose and different dress (though of course the face is similar). The husband-and-wife picture linked by Marion in the first comment is mentioned in passing in the catalogue as "a school piece of Lord and Lady Bayning," derived from van Dyck's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Thimbelby and her sister.

Thus, with apologies for my presumptuousness, not to say impudence, to the late Sir Oliver Millar and other real van Dyck experts like Dr. Bendor Grosvenor, I venture the following, however tentatively, for consideration:

The Newstead portrait is at least by "school of" or a "follower of" van Dyck, presumably ca. 1630s. It is not clearly a copy of a known van Dyck, but it could be a copy of a lost and unknown van Dyck original. I do not think it is fine enough to be by van Dyck's hand, but it is quite distinguished for a copy or an imitation, certainly much better than what is described in the Yale catalogue as "a weak derivation" (at Ickworth, link below) of one of the Buccleuch portraits mentioned above:

http://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/851801

Needless to say, other ideas, views or comments are both welcome and encouraged. I really do not want this discussion all to myself.



Jacinto Regalado,

In keeping with my prior comment as to the sitter perhaps being a lady of the Byron family, I briefly entertained William Dobson as the possible artist, since he painted John, 1st Baron Byron, ca. 1644:

https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/john-byron-d-1652-1st-lord-byron-103832

However, Dobson largely painted men, and the Newstead picture is much closer to a van Dyck as well as probably a little too early for Dobson, whose known works are typically from the 1640s.

Howard Jones,

Has anyone any information about the back of this painting, and is there any sort of signature or writing along the bottom? We know that sometimes portraits are touched up by later artists but hopefully the painting of the face here is original. Would the colour of the clothes be brighter if the painting was cleaned?

Jacinto Regalado,

To be more precise, the Pierre Lombart engraving of Penelope, Lady Herbert is dated as early 1660s by the British Museum.

Jacinto Regalado,

Interestingly, the Burleigh House copy of the lost van Dyck portrait of Lady Herbert is attributed to Joan Carlile (1606-79), one of the first female professional painters in Britain. Her few known original portraits are relatively stiff and somewhat primitive, as below:

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/carlile-portrait-of-an-unknown-lady-t14495

However, if she painted the Burleigh House copy, reproducing van Dyck certainly seems to have elevated her style.

Jacinto Regalado,

The van Dyck portrait of Elizabeth Hervey at Boughton House has a very similar background (presumably painted by assistants) to the one in the Newstead picture. I could not find the original online, but there is an early 20th century copy at Ickworth, here:

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/the-honourable-elizabeth-hervey-c-161016201700-the-honourable-mrs-john-hervey-171980/view_as/grid/search/keyword:elizabeth-hervey/page/1

Although the pose is similar, the faces, hair and dress don't match.

Jacinto Regalado,

Barring potential input from someone like Susan Barnes or Bendor Grosvenor, or additional information from Newstead Abbey (which would all be highly desirable), I suppose it could be proposed that this picture be listed as "Portrait of a Lady, ca. 1630s, after van Dyck."

Jacinto Regalado,

The third (presumably period) copy of the lost van Dyck portrait of Penelope, Lady Herbert which I mentioned previously has been accepted by Christ Church, Oxford, as a portrait of said lady, and its Art UK entry has been revised accordingly (so the link I gave previously no longer works). The picture is now here:

https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/portrait-of-penelope-lady-herbert-16201647-229066/view_as/grid/search/keyword:dyck-penelope-christ-church/page/1

Jacinto Regalado,

A curious find:

The Städel Museum in Frankfurt has a supposed van Dyck portrait identified as Penelope Naunton Herbert:

https://sammlung.staedelmuseum.de/en/work/portrait-of-penelope-naunton

The inscription at lower left (including the date of 1638) is a later addition and thus questionable. The picture was given to the museum in 1915 by Rosalie Wertheim, presumably of the German Wertheim department store family. However, this picture does not appear in the Complete Catalogue of the Paintings by Susan Barnes et al., so I am not sure what to make of it. In any case, the lady does not look like the known portraits of Penelope Naunton Herbert.

Howard Jones,

The Lady Penelope (nee Naunton) Herbert born in 1620 died as a young woman at the age of 27 yrs. It is strange that there is no record of the burial for the wife of the the 5th Earl of Pembroke.

Her mother Penelope Nauton and her grandmother's sister the infamous muse Penelope Devereux were buried at the church of St Clement Danes.

There appears to have been some sort of cult for burials for Lady Penelopes at St Clement as more than half of the named burialson the Find a Grave lists for St Clement from the 16th and 17th Centuries were named Penelope.

Is it possible that Penelope Herbert was also buried at the London church of St Clement. Does anyone know why the church attracted the burial of so many Lady Penelopes in the two centuries following the burial there of the Elizabethan muse Penelope Devereux who not only played the starring role in Sir Philip Sidney's Astrophel and Stella but may also have had walk on parts in other great works by authors from Shakespeare and Marlow to Ben Jonson.

Jacinto Regalado,

She was the wife of the future 5th Earl of Pembroke, but she died before he succeeded to the title in 1649.

Kieran Owens,

Jumping to conclusions about the identity of this sitter based on the engraving (c.1650) by Pierre Lombard after a van Dyck painting of this sitter, "which closely resembles this picture" might be a dangerous course of action to take. The rather formulaic and relatively limited number of poses that van Dyck, or his studio, used for his portraits of women leads to the conclusion that the only true element of distinction between one and the other is usually the face.


As there is actually no close resemblance between the face of this sitter, and that of the one in the engraving by Pierre Lombard/Lombart, linked to in the introduction to this discussion, should be seriously taken into consideration and caution should be exercised before attaching a name to this portrait that is quite obviously not the same as in the engraving.

This discussion's portrait far more closely resembles van Dyke's portrait of Lady Elizabeth Clifford, Countess of Burlington, which can be seen, through ArtUK, at the National Trust's Hardwick Hall.

https://bit.ly/2JhOuyY

That potential identification only goes to further underscore that danger of comparing poses, rather that the detail of the actual face. See attached by way of example.

Does Newstead Abbey have any documentation verifying the original identification of the sitter as Penelope, Lady Herbert, or was this just the name attached to the painting, as accepted as correct, when it was gifted in 1931?

One can conclude that the sitter in the engraving is actually Penelope, Lady Herbert, due to the lettering on the print itself, but what proof is there that this discussion's sitter is that lady? Perhaps a search for a different lady might actually be the task at hand here? Also, in regards to James Fairhead's suggestion, eight months ago, that this might be a portrait of a different Lady Penelope, the bookseller, J. Loder, listed the sitter in the portrait of Penelope Domina Herbert by van Dyke as being the daughter of Sir Robert Naunton. Additionally, the attached description from 'Les Gravers de Portraits en France' (1875-1877), by Ambroise Firman-Didot, also confirms that the engraving is of the daughter of Sir Robert Naunton, assuming, of course, that the author had accurate information to make such an identification.

Jacinto Regalado,

Kieran, I am pleased to see you join this discussion, which has regrettably been too much of a monologue thus far. While it may prove rather laborious, if you read through my comments, it should be clear that the identification of the sitter as Penelope, Lady Herbert has been doubted (not to say discounted) all along, starting with the discussion's title.

I pointed out that Lombart's engraving after van Dyck closely resembles this picture because it does, except for the face (as you note)--my point being that this looks much more like a van Dyck than anything by Michael Dahl, to whom this painting has been rather obviously misattributed (unless it is Dahl's copy of a now lost or untraced van Dyck).

The original for Lombart's engraving is lost, but at least three copies exist (all discussed with links above), and it is acknowledged as a portrait of Penelope Naunton Herbert in the van Dyck catalogue raisonné by Susan Barnes et al. (which includes a photo of one of the copies). The Newstead Abbey picture is not discussed in that catalogue, possibly because it was not known to its authors, and there is no matching original for it in the catalogue, either.

I suppose the Newstead picture is either a copy of a lost and otherwise unknown van Dyck or "style of" van Dyck by a follower or imitator. Clearly the same pose, dress and even background appear in other van Dyck female portraits.

Jacinto Regalado,

As for this potentially being the Countess of Burlington, I agree that is a better match than Penelope, Lady Herbert, but I am not convinced. The Burlington portrait shows a rather bird-like face, like that of comedy actress, and the Newstead lady looks more patrician and delicate, more soulful or reserved.

Kieran Owens,

Jacinto, perhaps my tone was not pitched correctly but I fully acknowledge the points that you made earlier. I was only positing a few suggestions that would help to clarify matters regarding the Lombart engraving (that it is of the daughter of Sir Robert Taunton) and the likelihood of this discussion's work actually being Penelope, Lady Herbert (which, from facial comparisons, it is quite obviously not).

Jacinto Regalado,

I agree that it would be of great interest if Newstead Abbey could offer or share any information on the attribution to Dahl and/or the identification of the sitter as Penelope, Lady Herbert.

Also, it is not clear when this picture actually entered Newstead Abbey or how long it has been there, as opposed to when it was officially or formally ceded to the newly public entity. As I noted earlier, this picture was a gift from Charles Ian Fraser in 1931, the year Newstead Abbey was presented to the Nottingham City Council by a local philanthropist, Sir Julien Cahn, who had bought the estate from Fraser (who had inherited it, possibly including the picture in question).

Jacinto Regalado,

I had not noticed the detail that this picture is currently listed as after, not by, Michael Dahl I (on what basis one would obviously like to know). This would imply it is based on, or a copy of, Dahl's work, as opposed to painted by Dahl after an earlier artist like van Dyck.

Dahl was born ca. 1660 and first arrived in London from his native Sweden in 1682, though he did not hit his stride till the 1690s, well over two generations after van Dyck died. It makes little if any sense that he would paint a portrait straight out of the 1630s rather than one in the latest fashion along the lines of Kneller.

Jacinto Regalado,

Marion, I am not sure quite how these things work, but would it be possible to ask Newstead Abbey to share what they know (if anything) about this portrait's attribution, the identification of the sitter, and the history of the picture with respect to the house?

Jacinto Regalado,

Well, barring input from Newstead Abbey or an authority on van Dyck, I'm afraid this may not get much further, which would be regrettable. Except for the specific face itself, everything else about this picture is clearly after van Dyck, not simply "style of" but copied or lifted from known van Dyck portraits from the 1630s. So, again barring additional input from other sources, I would propose "Portrait of a Lady," after (or style of, depending on convention) van Dyck, ca. 1630s.

Jacinto Regalado,

I would like to request again that Newstead Abbey be asked, via Marion, to share what they know (if anything) about this portrait's current attribution to Dahl, the current identification of the sitter as Penelope, Lady Herbert, and the history of the picture with respect to the house.

Newstead Abbey,

Hello everyone, I have the great pleasure of being curator at Newstead Abbey. I have read these comments with great interest, and I thank you for sharing your diligent investigation. I've had real problems logging in to this website in my short time at Newstead, but Marion has very kindly helped me with that today.

Our documentation on this work is disappointingly weak. As you have noted, our acquisition is dated at 1931, which is the date that Newstead came into public ownership. Anything in the house at that time has been accessioned with that date.

My predecessor has left notes, confirming the attribution to Dahl as an error resulting from an insurance valuation. There is no doubt that the painting is a copy after van Dyck.

We do know that this work was acquired by Thomas Wildman for display here, alongside other copies of Van Dyck works. Wildman owned Newstead between 1818 and 1859 (he was a schoolfriend of Lord Byron). There appears to be no association between Penelope, Lady Herbert, and the Byron or Wildman families.

I'm afraid that's all I can contribute at this stage. Marion has asked about images of the back of the painting. This would be difficult as it is on display here at height (in the place Wildman displayed it). On the next occasion that we have technician support here, I will take it down and photograph the back and share on here. I've attached an image of it in situ.

1 attachment
Jacinto Regalado,

Many thanks to Newstead Abbey for its helpful input. Since this picture is not an exact copy of a known van Dyck, but rather a kind of pastiche of van Dyck elements, it seems better to use "style of" rather than "after" van Dyck, though a case could be made for the latter. As for the title, "Portrait of a Lady" is perfectly apt. She does not look like known portraits of Penelope, Lady Herbert, so that title should be replaced. As far as I am concerned, this discussion can now be closed, pending the approval of the group leader or designee.

Newstead Abbey, Thank you for your very helpful contribution. Bendor Grosvenor, who is group leader for this discussion, will add his comments and wind this up.

Jacinto Regalado,

I think this could well be a copy of a lost or untraced van Dyck portrait in which he used or recycled the body (pose) and dress of the portrait of Penelope, Lady Herbert with a now different head. The practice is known to have been used by him in other instances.

Bendor Grosvenor,

Hello everyone, thanks for your comments here - I think it's now time to close the discussion; alas as is often the case, we have been unable to conclusively identify either artist or sitter. But we are a little closer to being able to likely date the picture to the late 1630s or more likely 1640s, on the basis of the compositional similarities with the works of Sir Anthony Van Dyck from his late English period. The pose, as Jacinto has noted, is something that Van Dyck and his studio used a number of times in the late 1630s. That he did so is a sign of how busy Van Dyck was, for until that point in his career he very rarely repeated poses. But in England, being able to rely on both studio assistants, and a not overly discerning public, he did. And then after his death the poses were repeated by his followers. So that's likely what we're dealing with here.

Whaley Turco,

Much Like the Portrait at the Stadel Museum this ain't a Van Dyck Either. Semi Educated guess. A talented follower Who had no understanding of color and Van Dyck gave up trying to explain it to him. I found this on Mould's site. "The significance and striking quality of this forgotten royal commission has only emerged following recent conservation and relining. Not only has cleaning revealed a work of highly sensitive characterisation and poise, on par with the most affecting of Van Dyck's more intimate portraits, but the discovery of van der Doort's royal brand, stamped on the reverse on the original lining, has reaffirmed the historical status of a young sitter who enjoyed many of the advantages of the royal children, including the services of the court painter." http://www.historicalportraits.com/Gallery.asp?Page=Item&ItemID=95&Desc=Lady-Mary-Villiers-|-Sir-Anthony-Van-Dyck . Even where the color is cool it is warm. Plus the Ladies Obligatory Flower. But the Fun part of this Was realizing how much John Singer Sargent stole from Van Dyck and was then actually able to kick it up a notch. For lack of a better description.

Jacinto Regalado,

It has already been accepted that this picture is not by van Dyck but after him or very much in his style, and that the sitter is a currently unidentified lady. I would suggest listing this as "Portrait of a Lady," style of Anthony van Dyck, c. 1640s.