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Dimensions: 31 by 25 3/4 in.; 78.7 by 65.4cm
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Provenance: THE PROPERTY OF A PRIVATE COLLECTOR
By descent in the family of the Earls of Sheffield;
By whome sold, Sheffield Park, Sotheby's, February 22, 1928, lot 24 for £220 to Pawsey and Payne;
Anonymous sale ("The Property of a Deceased Estate"), London, Sotheby's, April 8, 1998, lot 105 for £47,700;
There purchased by the present owner.
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Literature: B. Baumgartel, Angelika Kauffmann (1741-1807), Beltz 1990, Abb. 23, p. 119, illustrated p. 121.
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Notes: The sitter was the daughter of John Baker Holroyd, 1st Earl of Sheffield (1735-1831), and his first wife, Abigail (died 1739), only daughter of Lewis Way of Richmond, Surrey, whom he married in 1767. Holroyd was created Baron Sheffield in 1781, and was an active politician, and Privy Councillor. In 1797 Dorothea married General Sir William Henry Clinton, G.C.B., (died 1846). She was, with her sister, a great correspondent with the historian Edward Gibbon, (their father edited his miscellaneous works and published posthumously Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Edward Gibbon, and was executor of his will). The family's letters were sold to the British Museum by the third Earl in 1895.
There is a similarity between this portrait and Kauffman's presentation piece for the election to the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1765, which echoes in turn Guercino's Sibillica Persica of 1647 (see Literature below). Dr. Baumgartel has suggested a possible date for this painting of 1780 or 1781, prior to Kauffman's departure for Rome.
