Portrait of Lady Sarah Ingestre, ca. 1827-1828
Thomas Lawrence
English, 1769-1830
Oil on canvas
- This portrait was likely painted in 1828, the year Sarah Elizabeth Beresford married Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, Viscount Ingestre. She holds a rose to her breast, an attribute that traditionally conveys virtue and purity. The balustrade and terrace place the young bride in a handsome setting befitting her aristocratic union. The frame, with its white-washed garlands and fruit, is consistent with the interior decoration of Ingestre Hall, the manor house owned by the Chetwynd family.
- No. 60.039
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Hagar and Ishmael, ca. 1640
Francisco Collantes
Spanish, 1599-1656
Oil on canvas
- In this brooding scene from the Old Testament, Hagar and her son Ishmael, banished from the home of Abraham, are confronted by an angel as they rest below a blasted tree on the bank of a raging river. The artist, Francisco Collantes, was unusual among Spanish landscape painters, as he subjected religious narratives to the drama of the natural world, literally bringing them down to earth. He places the encounter of the figures at the center of this composition, allowing the tumultuous landscape to magnify the story's emotional content.
- No. 18.096
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Portrait of Antoine-Georges-François de Chabaud-Latour and His Family, 1806
Jacques-Luc Barbier-Walbonne
French, 1769-1860
Oil on canvas
- Portraiture and history painting come together in this tribute to family devotion. Tenderly instructing his daughter and son, Antoine-Georges-François de Chabaud-Latour gestures toward a monument to his own father, a distinguished military man and engineer. The carved epitaph-he lived and died without reproach-provides a lesson in virtue for the following generations. Chabaud-Latour's wife, Juliette, stands beside him, nursing their infant son, demonstrating the importance of maternal strength to the future of family and nation. The portrait is situated in the landscape of Nimes in southern France, home to both the artist and the Chabaud-Latour family.
- No. 2003.105
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Allegorical Portrait of a Lady as Fortune, 1660s
Attributed to Henri Gascard
French, 1634-1701
Oil on canvas
- This ideal of aristocratic female beauty was celebrated in England under the reign of King Charles Il, and shared in dozens of portraits of his numerous mistresses. The identity of this woman is not known, but her oval face, long nose, languid gaze, and sumptuous costume proclaim her resemblance to the Windsor Beauties, the countesses and duchesses whom the king commissioned Peter Lely to paint in the late 1660s. Crowned by a garland, she is portrayed with the attributes of Fortune. The globe signifies chance, and the movement of her floating drapery represents fate's constant shifts.
- No. 55.152
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The Angel of Fame, ca. 1750
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Italian, 1696-1770
Fresco, mounted on canvas
- In the 1740s, Tiepolo received a private commission to decorate the last great private home to be built on Venice's Grand Canal. Owned by relative newcomers to Venetian nobility, the Palazzo Labia featured elaborate formal spaces and a spectacular ballroom. Tiepolo collaborated with a specialist in illusionistic painting to create wall paintings in fresco, a technique in which pigments are applied directly to wet plaster. This foreshortened angel, whose trumpet announces the family's fame, appeared on a ceiling in a formal room, set into a gilded framework. Removed from its original location and mounted on canvas, the painting is seen here without its original architectural context.
- No. 32.246
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