Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces

Art Institute of Chicago

Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces

Sir Joshua Reynolds (English, 1723–1792)LinkedCulture matchlcp-b032ef92a975

Date
1763–65
Medium
Oil on canvas
Culture
England
Department
Painting and Sculpture of Europe
Institution
Art Institute of Chicago
Object ID
4788

From the Art Institute of Chicago record

Dressed in Classically inspired robes, Lady Sarah Bunbury pours a libation of oil as an offering to the Three Graces, positioned behind her. Her soon-to-be husband, Charles Bunbury, commissioned this marriage portrait, making her association with the Graces—symbols of fertility and attendants to the Roman goddess of love, Venus—all the more appropriate. The first president of the Royal Academy in London, Sir Joshua Reynolds urged his fellow artists to paint historical and edifying subjects based on the art of antiquity and the Renaissance. As a portrait painter, he developed a grand style that ennobled the genre by giving his sitters Classical attributes and poses.

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Provenance & credit

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Credit line
Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection
Provenance
Commissioned by Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, sixth Bt. (d. 1821), husband of the sitter, apparently for 250 gns [Malcolm Cormack, “The Ledgers of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” Walpole Society 42 (1968–70, pp. 112, 145]; by descent to his nephew’s grandson, Sir Henry Charles John Bunbury, tenth Bt., Barton Hall and Mildenhall, Suffolk, to at least 1905 [Armstrong 1905]. Charles J. Wertheimer (d. 1911), London, by 1908 [according to London 1908]; sold Christie’s, London, May 10, 1912, no. 63, to Sulley [see London 1986]. Henry Reinhardt Gallery, New York and Chicago, by 1915; sold by Reinhardt to Mrs. W. W. Kimball (d. 1921), Chicago, 1915 [see American Art News 1915]; on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago from 1920; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1922.

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Object type
AAT300033618

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