Lot 3: Joan Carlile (c.1606-1679)

Portrait of a Lady, possibly lady Anne Wentworth (1629-1696), full-length, in a white dress and a purple mantle, before a bank in a wooded river landscape
oil on canvas
49 1/4 x 39 3/4 in. (125 x 101 cm.)
in an associated George III giltwood frame

M. Toynbee and G. Isham, 'Joan Carlile (1606?-1679) - An Identification', Burlington Magazine, XCVI, September 1954, pp. 275-7, no. 8, fig. 4.

Possibly Lady Anne Wentworth and by descent to
Charles 2nd Marquess of Rockingham (d.1782) and by descent to his nephew
William, 4th Earl Fitzwilliam (1748-1833) and by descent until
Christie's, London, 8 July 1998, lot 92 (sold £45,500).

Lady Anne Wentworth (1629-1696) was the eldest daughter of Thomas Wentworth, 1st Earl of Strafford by his second wife, Lady Arabella Holles (d.1631). She married Edward Watson, 2nd Baron Rockingham in 1654, and through this marriage the Wentworth estates passed to her son, Hon. Thomas Wentworth, on the death of her brother William, 2nd Earl of Strafford, in 1695.

As a child Lady Anne was painted with her brother, William (1626-1695), and her younger sister, Lady Arabella (1630-1689), in a group portrait by van Dyck commissioned by their devoted father, the 1st Earl of Strafford (for which see O. Millar, Van Dyck in England, Catalogue of the Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, 1982, no. 32). The physical resemblance between her portrait as a child and the sitter in this portrait is striking.

Joan Carlile was among the very first English women to practice painting professionally. Little is known however of her life or her work. Her father William Palmer (d.1634) was one of the senior staff at St. James's Park and the Spring Garden. Her husband, Lodowick Carlile, whom she married in 1626, was 'Gentleman of the bows' to King Charles I, a minor dramatist, and one of the Keepers of Richmond Park by 1637. They lived at the first Petersham Lodge, just inside the north-west corner of Richmond (New) Park where she practised as a portrait painter. In 1654 they moved to Covent Garden, then the artists' quarter of London, but returned to Petersham in the summer of 1656. By 1658 she had certainly made a considerable reputation as an artist, being included in William Sanderson's Graphice, published that year, under the list of 'English Modern Masters': 'And in Oyl colours we have a virtuous example, in that worthy Artist Mrs Carlile'. Although servants of the Stuarts they retained their post at Petersham throughout the Commonwealth. In 1660, on the restoration of King Charles II, they were given the office of 'Keeper of the house or Lodge and the Walk at Petersham'. In 1665 they moved once more to London, living in St. James's market. Joan Carlile died there in 1679, four years after her husband. Both were buried in Petersham Churchyard.

This picture is stylistically close to the artist's group portrait of The Isham and Carlile Families at a Stag Hunt, at Lamport Hall (see M. Toynbee and G. Isham, op.cit, p. 276, no.1, fig.7).

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