Thomas Osborne, 1st Duke of Leeds ('Lord Danby')

Inscriptionback to top

Inscribed, upper right: Earl of Danby/Marquis of Caemarthen/1689.

This portraitback to top

The composition uses a standard Lely design for Garter knights, [1] and the head is taken from that of Lely’s slightly earlier portrait. The execution, however, is not Lely’s and NPG 1472 may conceivably have been the whole-length left in Lely’s studio completed by Sonnius. [2]
There were three three-quarter length copies of Lely’s Earl of Danby in Lely’s posthumous sale, [3] but there are two known Lely patterns.

Footnotesback to top

1) See O. Millar in Sir Peter Lely, exh. cat., NPG, 1978, no.43.
2) C. H. Collins Baker, Lely and the Stuart Portrait Painters, 1912, II, p 141.
3) Burl. Mag., LXXXIII, 1943, p 188.

Referenceback to top

Beckett 1951
R. B. Beckett, Lely, 1951, no.286.

Piper 1963
D. Piper, Catalogue of the Seventeenth Century Portraits in the National Portrait Gallery 1625-1714, 1963, p 197.

Conservationback to top

Lined; the original turn-over edges have been unfolded and overpainted; the blue of the gown is much faded; partially cleaned 1992.

Provenanceback to top

James, 2nd Earl of Fife (1729-1809), Duff House;¹ by descent to the 1st Duke of Fife; Christie’s, 7 June 1907,² lot 70 as by Kneller, bt. Leggatt for the NPG.

¹ Listed at Duff House 1796 (Sir William Musgrave, MS lists of portraits, British Museum, Add. MS 6392, f.40, no.121 as by Kneller).
² The sale described as being part of ‘a very large Collection which was made by James, Earl of Fife [2nd Earl of Fife, 1729-1809], towards the end of the Eighteenth Century, and ... placed in Duff House, where they have remained ever since.’ The sale was occasioned by the presentation of Duff House to the borough of Banff by the 1st Duke of Fife in 1906.

Exhibitionsback to top

Hampton Court Palace, 1992-.


This extended catalogue entry is by John Ingamells, one of a limited number of entries drafted in 2010 for the incomplete catalogue, Early Stuart Portraits 1625-1685, and is as written then. For the most up-to-date details on individual Collection works, we recommend reading the information provided in the Search the Collection results on this website in parallel with this text.

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