Portrait Of Lady Anne Clifford, Countess Of Dorset, Pembroke, And Montgomery (1590-1676) C.1618

Lady Anne Clifford was a lady of the court of Queen Anne and a favourite of Elizabeth I as a child, a formidable noblewoman who lived in the very centre of the social, political, and cultural life of the nation. A tragic heroine, she lost her kingdom and three children. She was Countess of Pembroke, Dorset, and Montgomery by marriage and by birth Baroness Clifford, Westmorland, and Vesey, Lady of the Honour of Skipton in Craven, and the High Sheriffess of Westmorland. At her death she was the wealthiest noblewoman in England by some accounts. She spent much of her life in a long and complex legal battle to obtain the rights of her inheritance. Her fascinating story is known through a huge array of writing and accounts that she compiled throughout her entire life. These accounts provide a rare and interesting glimpse into life during the 17th century and are immensely important. She describes the deaths of kings and queens, civil wars, the Great Plague, and the Great Fire of London. She commissioned numerous portraits, including two large triptychs and works of family history. She sat to Larkin, van Somer, and Van Dyke (and possibly Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, Dobson, Mytens, Gilbert Jackson, and Peter Lely) and it is well documented that she had many copies of her portraits sent to friends and family (between 1670-1675 alone she had 16 copies of her various portraits made). This was a time when it is common to make and distribute multiple copies of portraits, both at the time of painting and later, both by the same hand and by copyists. A very similar portrait of the sitter to our portrait exists at Nostell Priory, West Yorkshire. Anne Clifford was born in 1589 at Skipton Castle, the daughter of George Clifford, 3rd earl of Cumberland and his wife Margaret. Her father was an extravagant courtier and naval admiral and was one of the most glamourous members of the old aristocracy at the royal court of Elizabeth I. Anne was the only surviving child when her father died but she did not inherit her father's vast estates - the Clifford family lands were extensive and included the great castles of Skipton, Brougham, Brough and Appleby. Instead these lands and titles where left to her uncle, Francis Clifford, and Anne was to receive £15,000 in compensation. This was a direct breach of an entail which stated that the Clifford estates should descend lineally to the eldest heir, whether male or female, dating back to the time of King Edward II. From that moment, Anne's mission in life was to regain what she viewed as her rightful inheritance and thus ensued almost forty years of relentless litigation. To bolster her case, with the professional help of clerks and antiquarians, she became a remarkable family historian, producing manuscript volumes detailing or reproducing in full all the currently available evidence of her family's history and estates dating back to the 1100s. The most notable of these genealogical writings is her ‘Great Books of Record’, a series of three 1,000-page sets consisting of three volumes each which reflects the lives of peasants, merchants and labourers as well as monarchs and the aristocracy. A one-volume abridgement of these was also created. The earliest documents in the Great Books dates from 1088, and after Anne Clifford’s death her descendants added material until the 1730s. Lady Anne also incorporated in these manuscripts her autobiography entitled ‘A Summary of the Records and a True Memorial of the Life of Mee the Lady Anne Clifford’, dated 1652, and she continued to write this until the day of her death. She also kept diaries, as well as financial accounts, and one of her early journals including verses probably by her tutor (until 1602). In 1609 she married her first husband, Richard Sackville, 3rd Earl of Dorset, who was a notorious wastrel and spendthrift; he almost spent the entire great fortune which descended to him from his family. There are many accounts of an unhappy marriage, but, it is clear that Anne was really fond of him, and equally clear that at times, he had considerable affection for her, but he was led astray by his love of sport and gambling and by his wild companions. The couple had a daughter in 1614. The couple quarrelled intensely about her ongoing pursuit of her family estates and her reluctance to settle it for a cash payment but this was intense in 1616 and in May Dorset exclaimed that she could not live at Knole (his home) any longer, that her daughter should be taken away, and that her wedding ring be returned. She wrote in Feb 1616: “All the tyme I stay’d in the Country I was sometimes merry & sometimes sad, as I heard news from London” and “I stayed in the country, having many times a sorrowful and heavy heart”. Anne and her daughter were reunited in Dec of that year. That same year her mother, Margaret, died: “Upon the 24th [May 1616] being Friday between the hours of six and 7 at night died my deare Mother at Broome in the same chambere where my father was borne; thirteen years & 2 months after the death of Q. Eliz. [Queen Elizabeth I] & 10 years & 4 months after the death of my father, I being then 26 years old & 4 months & the Childe two years old wanting a month”. She later wrote: “Upon the 24th [August 1616] in the afternoone I drest the Chamber where my Lady died & set up the Greene Velvet bed where the same night we went to lye there”. In the period of 1616-17 nearly every account relates to the long legal battle and intense struggle to reclaim her hereditary estates. Indeed, the subject matter in her memoirs and diary suggest that she saw the years 1603, 1616, 1617 and 1619 as key years in her early life. She gave birth to a son on 2 Feb 1618 but he died almost 6 months later. She was also one of Queen Anne’s chief mourners in 1619. Anne was much depressed by these events. She later gave birth to a boy in c.1620 and 1621 but they both died soon after birth. In 1622 she gave birth to a second daughter, that survived. Lady Anne has left no record of her grief at the latter two deaths, although she was a very fond mother to the Lady Margaret, and clearly did not lack the maternal feelings sometimes doubted of the mothers of dead infants in this period. A possible explanation for her emotional restraint is that she thought of these two male infants as Dorset's heirs and she was emotionally more concerned with establishing her separate identity as the sole legitimate heir of the Clifford’s. Dorset died in 1624 and in 1630, Anne married Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke, one of Charles I’s leading courtiers – together they had two children. The couple eventually separated. It was not until the death in 1643 of her cousin Henry Clifford, 5th Earl of Cumberland, that Anne managed to regain the family estates. She then set about repairing and rebuilding her many castles rotating her residence amongst theme. On 21 Mar 1676 Lady Anne Clifford died at the age of 86 in the room in which her father had been born and her mother had died. The portrait can be dated to c.1618 (as the high-waisted gown, ruff, and hairstyle indicate). An embroidered, silk tabbed over-bodice with hanging sleeves is worn over a blackwork (stylised motifs embroidered in black silk on silk) bodice and matching petticoat or skirt. Her ruff and matching cuffs are of the then popular ‘birds-eye’ design, which was a spotted or speckled fine silk, linen or muslin tinted with yellow starch. Spangles were a popular form of embellishment for the clothing of the aristocracy from the 16th through the 18th century. A host of sumptuary laws governing the dress of all classes of society prevented them being worn by anyone not of the nobility. During the early 17th century, ladies were often portrayed wearing black threads or ribbons round their necks, their wrists, and in an ear (as in our portrait) and this became fashionable at court under Queen Anne. The sitter also wears the double thread from her left ear in her portrait by William Larkin c.1618 (National Portrait Gallery, London). It is possible that the costume and black jewellery, in the form of expensive egg-shaped jet beads (featured in other portraits by van Somer), is mourning costume. During this time the battle to reclaim to estates was intense, and the banishing of Lady Anne to a private existence, the removal of Lady Margaret Sackville from her mother, and the demand for return of the wedding ring, were all punishments which a masterful nobleman could inflict upon his erring wife however noble her birth. At the time Lady Anne commented: 'having many times a sorrowful and heavy heart, and being condemned by most folks because I would not consent to the agreements, so I may truly say, I am like an owl in the desert'. However, the colour black, and the veil (here, made of transparent gauze and hanging from the headdress) were both highly fashionable items. This is a rare and attractive portrait of the last member of one of England’s great medieval dynasties – a lady who became a legend in her own time and has remained a celebrated figure ever since. Paul van Somer was born in Antwerp. He settled in England in 1616. He was already a court painter by 1617 and was possibly Official Painter to Queen Anne of Denmark. He charged £30 for a full length royal portrait in 1620. He was principal among those who set Court painting in England on an altered course. Provenance: Faringdon House Faringdon House, an Elizabethan house that Cromwell assaulted but failed to take, was rebuilt in 1780. Faringdon House was the home of Lord Berners, the composer, artist and writer who was immortalised in Nancy Mitford's novel The Pursuit of Love as the character Lord Merlin). Gerald Hugh Tyrwhitt-Wilson, inherited the title of Lord Berners in 1918 and moved into Faringdon House in 1931 after a diplomatic career on the Continent. He made his home an aesthete's Camelot, with guests including Salvador Dalí and Margot Fonteyn. The house contained the Berner’s family portraits which came primarily from the Knyvetts at Ashwellthorpe and the Wilsons of Didlington (both Norfolk). Measurements: Height 99cm, Width 79cm framed (Height 39”, Width 31” framed)