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SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS (BRITISH 1723-1792) PORTRAIT OF LADY STANDISH Oil on canvas 75 x 61cm (29½ x 24 in.) Provenance: Lady Catherine Standish;Elizabeth Ramsden née Smyth (heraldic co-heiress - Smyth arms quartered within those of Ramsden) Thence by descent to Col. R. C. P. Ramsden, Wigthorpe Hall, near Worksop, 1958 Thence by descent to Mrs Butroid. Her sale, Christie's 24 June, 1977, Lot 73. Private collection, United Kingdom. Literature: A. Graves & W. V. Cronin. A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, 4 vols, London 1899-190. Volume III, p. 927 (sitter wrongly identified) David Mannings. Sir Joshua Reynolds, A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, 2 vols, London: Yale University Press, 2000. Vol I, Text, p. 430; Vol II, Plates, p. 133 (fig. 365) Lady Catherine Standish (d.1780), née Catherine Frank, was born into the prominent Frank family of Pontefract, Yorkshire. Her mother, Elizabeth Lowther, was the daughter of Sir John Lowther Bt., M.P. for Westmoreland, and Catherine's father, Robert Frank MP (1660-1738), was active in borough politics and appointed Recorder for the Corporation of Pontefract in 1686. Although his appointment was contested several times during the dynastic and constitutional tumults of the late seventeenth century, he notably held office until his death in 1738, and served as an M.P. for the borough between 1710 and 1716. Frank was notably blacklisted as a 'Tory patriot' by the Hanoverians who held their crown by Whig support. Frank ensured that his daughter's marriages were advantageous and her first husband, John Smyth J.P. (1685-1731) of Heath Hall, Heath, was heir to a vast mercantile fortune. His father used this to cement their family's newfound place in the county gentry, purchasing the Heath estate near Wakefield and becoming 'the first squire of Heath.' His life was cut short however, and Catherine would soon remarry to Sir Thomas Standish of Duxbury, 2nd Baronet of Duxbury, becoming Lady Standish. However, it was through her daughter by her first marriage, née Elizabeth Smyth (b. 1727), that her acquaintance with Sir Joshua Reynolds was made. Elizabeth married Robert Ramsden of Osberton (1708-1769) in 1753, the fourth son of Sir William Ramsden, 2nd Bt. He was a captain in the British Army during the War of the Austrian Succession and served with distinction at the Battle of Dettingen on the 27th June 1743 and at the Battle of Fontenoy on the 11th May 1745. Robert was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1755, sitting to the artist on four occasions. The portrait, which depicts Ramsden in a 'plum-coloured coat,' on a 'luminous greeny-grey background' was likely the inspiration for the commissioning of this portrait by his mother-in-law three years later, for in 1758 Lady Standish would also sit for Reynolds four times. The resultant half-length portrait depicts her wearing a white dress and black wrap. A great experimenter with paint, Reynolds was hailed by his admirers and reviled by his critics. This portrait is typical of the artist's work of the 1750s when he developed the technique of 'dead colouring,' in which monochrome, or near monochrome, paint layers were used to create luminous flesh tones. That this technique is made explicit here makes this striking portrait a testament not only to the sitter's patronage, but also to the pioneering painter himself.