Some years ago, I posted on here a blog about an anonymous portrait that we’d bought, grubby and unloved, at Sotheby’s in Milan in 2004. The only information about it that we had at the time, from the Sotheby’s catalogue was that it was by John Riley, which in fact we chose to ignore, on the notably confident advice which somebody had pencilled at some time on the stretcher that in fact the picture was by Michael Dahl. And subsequent research suggested that this assertion was probably correct, since the colour palette of the portrait fits perfectly with the sub-fusc tones that were generally favoured by Dahl. But, I’m now having to row back on that one, as I think we might have succeeded in finding out the identity of the sitter, and that identification sits well with the artist having been Riley, and makes it improbable that this is a work by Dahl.
We’ve owned the portrait for a little over twenty years, during which time she has graced different places in different houses – for a long time, she looked down from a lofty position above the Drawing Room fireplace in the house at Santa Caterina, in Pisa – and she’s now come to rest in the inner entrance hall of this house, where her quietly commanding presence fits perfectly within the embrace of the stairwell. In the absence of her proper name, we’ve always referred to her as ‘Doris’.
Until now.
The TD was idly playing around with his ipad, the other day, when it occurred to him to do a Google Image Search for Doris, and he was astonished when he got an immediate hit. There, in amongst all of the many similar images of slightly chubby seventeenth century allumeuses, all with flowing robes and gracefully positioned limbs, was unmistakeably our Doris. No question about it.
The image had been displayed, years ago, on a website for something called ‘anticoantico’, which is a kind of online aggregator for italian antique dealers, and the description given for the picture was, unsurprisingly, ‘Ritratto di Dama in un Paesaggio’. Frustratingly, TD clicked on a link to something else, and then found he couldn’t get back to the anticoantico listing, and when he tried to repeat his original search, the historic anticoantico listing wouldn’t appear – such are the vagaries of Google searching! He did remember, though, that along with the somewhat generic title for the portrait, there had also been a reference to John Riley, to a sale at Christies in 1938, and to ‘Uvedale da Tomkins’. The last of which rang no bells, but it did at least provide a thread to pull on.
Uvedale Tomkins (or Tomkyns), it turns out, was a member of the Herefordshire gentry, and his dates were 1649 -1692. It’s not hugely relevant, but his parents were Lucy (nee Uvedale, before her first marriage to a Mr Neale, and hence Uvedale’s unusual christian name) and Thomas Tomkins. Uvedale married Mary Capel (or Capell, or Caple), who was also born in 1649, but who outlived her husband by a number of years, not dying until December 1728. I’ve not been able to find out when Mary Capel and Uvedale Tomkins married, but it was certainly before 1679, as in that year they were recorded, as man and wife, as having significantly re-built St Mary’s Church at Monnington-on-Wye, where the Tomkins family were lords of the manor (where, I think, they lived at a house called Moccas Court). Mary Capel also came from Herefordshire gentry, and her family had owned the manor of How Caple (or Capel) since 1289, and they lived there in a house called How Caple Court. As is clear, the various spellings of all the names are all over the place, and so any online search about this lot is fraught with peril!
If the Uvedale Tomkins reference is to be believed – and it seems so obscure that I can’t think why anybody would have made it up – then the most likely candidate to be our Doris is clearly Mary Capel. And that then informs the issue of whether the work is by Riley or by Dahl. Doris looks to be young, probably still in her twenties (although I suppose a tactful portrait-painter might have opted for an image which looked more youthful than the reality). Dahl didn’t arrive in Britain until 1682, however, by which time Mary Capel would have been 33, and Dahl didn’t then remain in Britain for long, since he was off travelling around Europe soon thereafter (he was in Paris in 1685, and in Rome after that) and he wasn’t back in Britain again until 1688. Since it would be too much of a stretch for Doris to be a woman approaching her fortieth year, then this restricts the possibility of Dahl having painted her to the suggestion that it happened in around 1683 – when she would probably have already been too old for the image we have, quite apart from any question of why Dahl and Uvedale Tomkins would have come into contact with each other at that date. Riley, on the other hand, was already active by 1670, and during the following decade he was working significantly on a whole raft of socially diverse subjects – it was only after 1680, following the demise of Peter Lely, that Riley became the go-to portrait painter for the Rich and Famous. On that basis alone, Riley is by far the stronger contender.
Further research into How Caple (or Capel, or Capell), however, revealed that in 1677 How Caple Court was sold by the Capel family (by Edward Capel, in fact, who must have been a brother of Mary’s, her father was called James) to Sir William Gregory, who was an up-and-coming figure in Westminster. And the portrait of Sir William Gregory which even now is held in the collection of the Palace of Westminster is by...John Riley.
Ok, it’s all circumstantial, and it might all just be happenstance. But, somehow, I don’t think it is. If you triangulate the connection through How Caple and through Uvedale Tomkins, then you end up with Mary Capel and with John Riley, whose dates would fit perfectly with the picture having been painted around 1675. Possibly commissioned by Mary Capel's doting new husband. For me, it works.
Uvedale Tomkins and Mary Capel had no issue, and when she died in 1728 her estate was left to her brother John (perhaps Edward was no longer around by then), and he in turn left his estate to his only child, who was another Mary Capel, and who was married to a John Whitmore, a member of yet another Herefordshire family, who lived at a small estate called The Haywood. After Haywood Lodge was sold by the Whitmores in 1783, the immediate trail goes cold, although I think there’s good reason to believe that Doris was passed down through the same family right through until she was sold at Christies in 1938. The idea is entirely credible that it was always known within the family that the portrait – of some long-distant family connection - was in some way related to Uvedale Tomkins, and that it was by John Riley, and so when Doris was consigned at Christies in 1938, that was how she would have been described in the auction catalogue. (Without success, I’ve skimmed the record of the sales at Christies for the whole of 1938 in search of a reference to a consignor called ‘Whitmore’, but given how many times the picture could have remained within the same family but have been passed down on the distaff side, this isn’t entirely surprising). If the portrait had come adrift from the Whitmore family (or whatever their name was by then) at some point between 1728 and 1938, then the fact that it had always been known that it was of ‘Great-Great-Aunt Mary, when she was young’ and that is was something to do with Uvedale Tomkins would also have got lost (as it subsequently did before the picture was consigned at Sotheby’s in 2004).
The same sort of reasoning suggests that whoever owned it around 2000 was probably a family connection of whoever had bought it in 1938 – a grandchild, maybe? – since otherwise the fact of the 1938 purchase and the reference from the 1938 catalogue is unlikely to have been retained, and then quoted when the picture was passed for sale via anticoantico. And for it to have been at Sotheby’s in 2004, whoever bought it via anticoantico must have owned it only for a short time before they sold it again - but when they did so, they didn’t think to repeat the previous reference to Uvedale Tomkins, and so it was at that point that Doris well and truly became a nameless orphan.
How it was that she came to Italy, and who it was that wrote – in English – on the back of the frame that this is in fact a work by Michael Dahl, we will never know. Intriguing, but completely unanswerable.
For now, though, I’m content to think that every time I pass her, at the foot of the stairs, I can give a nod to Mary Capel, and feel glad that she’s got her name back, after all this time.
Tonight's dinner:
Tomato and gorgonzola tarts
Slow-cooked pork belly, with star anise; fagioli with lemon
Hazelnut souffles
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