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©
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Sir Joshua Reynolds

Frances, Countess of Dartmouth

1756
Oil on canvas.
127 x 102 cm
Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid
Inv. no.
334
(
1977.74
)
Not on display
  • Level 2 Permanent Collection
  • Level 1 Permanent Collection
  • Level 0 Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
  • Level -1 Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Level 2
Permanent Collection
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 14 13 15 16 17 18 22 19 20 21 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 Recommended start of the visitClassical rooms
1 14th Century. Early Italian Painting 2 15th Century. German and Spanish Painting 3 15th Century. Early Netherlandish Painting 4 15th Century. Italian Painting 5 15th and 16th Centuries. Renaissance Portraiture 6 16th Century. Villahermosa Gallery 7 16th Century. Italian Painting 8 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 9 15th and 16th Centuries. German Painting 10 16th Century. Netherlandish Painting 11 Tiziano, Tintoretto, Bassano and  El Greco 12 17th Century. Caravaggio and Baroque Painting 13 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 14 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 15 17th Century. Italian, French and Spanish Painting 16 18th Century. Italian Painting 17 18th Century. Italian Painting 18 18th Century. Italian Painting 19 Classical rooms 20 Classical rooms 21 Classical rooms 22 18th Century. Italian Painting 23 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 24 18th Century. French and English Painting 25 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Scenes of Daily Life and Interiors 26 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 27 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Portrait 28 17th Century. Dutch Painting. Landscape 29 19th Century. European Painting. Goya and Romanticism  
Level 1
Permanent Collection
30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 Postpop rooms Rodin room
30 18th and 19th Centuries. Transatlantic Relations 31 19th Century. American Landscape and Environmental Awareness 32 19th Century. American Landscape and Urban Life 33 Recovering the ligth. Restoration of Waterloo Bridge, by André Derain 34 20th Century. Expressionist Landscapes 35 20th Century. Expressionist Portraits 36 20th Century. The Language of the Body 37 20th Century. Urban unrest 38 20th Century. Flowers 39 20th Century. Pioneers of abstraction 40 20th Century. Popular flavor 41 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition I 42 20th Century. The Cubist Tradition II 43 20th Century. Abstract Utopias 44 20th Century. Dada and Surrealism 45 20th Century. Interwar Realisms 46 20th Century. American Abstraction I 48 20th Century. Post-ward American Art 49 20th Century. Post-ward European Figurative Art 50 20th Century. Informalisms 51 20th Century. Homo Ludens 52 20th Century. Pop Art 53 Postpop rooms 54 Postpop rooms 55 Postpop rooms 56 Postpop rooms Rodin Exhibition room
Level 0
Carmen Thyssen Collection and Temporary exhibition rooms
A B C D E F G H I J Hall Temporary exhibition rooms Access to Permanent Collection Entrance Access to Carmen Thyssen Collection Paseo del Prado Garden
A 17th and 18th Centuries. Old Masters B 19th Century. North American Landscape C 19th Century. French Naturalist Landscape D 19th Century. Impressionism E 19th Century. Monet and North American Impressionism F 19th Century. Gauguin and Postimpressionism G 19th and 20th Centuries. Neo Impressionism and its Wake H 20th Century. Early Avant-gardes I 20th Century. Between the Wars Painting. Cubism, Abstraction and Surrealism J 20th Century. North American Painting and Others • HALL
Level -1
Temporary exhibition rooms, Conference room and EducaThyssen workshop
Temporary exhibition rooms Conference room EducaThyssen Workshop
The present portrait of Frances, Countess of Dartmouth was acquired for the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection in 1977 from the UK art market. As with a number of other paintings from the Collection, in particular 17th- and 18th-century Italian works, it was displayed in Daylesford House, the residence of the Baron and Baroness in England. The information provided at the time of its purchase includes the date of the painting and its earlier history. In the 19th century Reynolds’ portrait was owned by the Earl of Feversham and was loaned by the Earl to an exhibition held in Manchester entitled Art Treasures of the United Kingdom in 1857. In 1927 it was with Leggatt Brothers. The painting is mentioned in the monographs on Reynolds by Walter Armstrong, published in 1900, and Waterhouse of 1941.

Frances Legge, Countess of Dartmouth (1733–1805) was the daughter of Sir Charles Gunter-Nicoll and Elizabeth Blundell. In 1755, one year before the date of this canvas, she married the 2nd Earl of Dartmouth. The young Countess is described by a contemporary as being an attractive woman who had been well educated and had a good sense of humour.

Reynolds executed this female portrait a few years after his return from Italy and after he had permanently settled in London in 1753. During that decade he began to establish himself in the capital’s art world and to acquire a distinguished group of clients whom he depicted using the knowledge he had acquired during his study trip to Italy. Reynolds worked in the grand style in his portraits, drawing on both antiquity and the Renaissance, which he fused with elements traditional to the genre of portraiture.

The Countess of Dartmouth wears formal court dress with a low-necked, fur-trimmed, white satin dress decorated with a wealth of diamond jewellery in the form of stomachers and long and short necklaces. In her right hand she holds her coronet of rank. Reynolds uses a plain, dark background in which we can make out the back and arm of a large chair on the left and part of an architectural element on the right. The Countess’ delicate, very pale skin is comparable in tone to the trimming of her dress and her lace sleeves, which are almost the same colour. Her body and face, with its bright patches of rouge on the cheeks, are presented frontally and the Countess looks directly at the viewer with a slightly absent gaze.

The name of the sitter is recorded in Reynolds’ Pocket Book in which the artist noted several sittings with the Countess, some of them cancelled, as well as a drawn copy of the portrait.

Mar Borobia
18th Centurys. XVIII - Pintura británicaPaintingOilcanvas
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Frances, Countess of Dartmouth. Frances, condesa de Dartmouth, 1756
Frances, Countess of Dartmouth
Sir Joshua Reynolds

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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Frances, Countess of Dartmouth. Frances, condesa de Dartmouth, 1756
Frances, Countess of Dartmouth
Sir Joshua Reynolds

©

Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

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