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PROPERTY OF THE TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART, SOLD TO BENEFIT THE ACQUISITIONS FUND

PORTRAIT OF MRS. JAMES KER (1760-1822)

PORTRAIT OF MRS. JAMES KER (1760-1822)

measurements note
35 by 27 1/4 in.; 89 by 69.2 cm.

three-quarter length, seated wearing a white dress with gold sash under a blue robe
oil on canvas

PROVENANCE

With Thos. Agnew & Sons, London, by 1897;
George Jay Gould, "Georgian Court'" Lakewood, N.J.;
Clement O. Miniger, Perrysburg, Ohio;
Mr. and Mrs. George M. Jones Jr., Perrysburg, Ohio;
By whom given to the Toledo Museum of Art (not accessioned).

EXHIBITED

Edinburgh, Scottish National Gallery (on loan from the Misses Ker);
London, Thos. Agnew & Sons, Twenty Masterpieces, 1897, no. 17.

LITERATURE

H. Ward and W. Roberts, Romney, London 1904, Vol. II, p. 88.

NOTE

The sitter was Mary Bull, daughter of Capt. Thomas Bull, a commander of a vessel in the Honourable East India Company's service. She was born in Bengal in 1760 and married James Ker, Esq., of Elphinstone Tower, Musselburgh on July 30, 1777. She died at Tunbridge Wells on September 14, 1822. Mrs. Ker sat for Romney in May of 1784 and payment for the portrait was received in April 1785.

The lovely Mrs. Ker was exactly the type of sitter which Romney relished, as observed by a Times reviewer at the time of the 1897 Agnew's exhibition (see Exhibited): "Mrs. Ker was a beauty after his [Romney's] own heart, and of the type that he often painted; she is shown almost in profile, the face turned slightly up, with pale-blue cloak over a white dress, and with a specially graceful arrangement of the hands."υ1 The sitter is shown posed in a vaguely "Oriental" dress no doubt in reference to her "exotic" origins.

This painting was once owned by George Jay Gould (1864-1923), the financier and railroad heir and executive. He began the construction of his opulent mansion, Georgian Court, in Lakewood, New Jersey, in 1896. The house was designed by the New York architect Bruce Price on the pattern of the British country house, and it was filled with appropriate artworks. The house now forms the center of Georgian Court University.

1 H. Ward and W. Roberts, op.cit., p. 88.