Edward Smith Stanley (1752–1834), Twelfth Earl of Derby, Elizabeth, Countess of Derby (Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, 1753–1797), and Their Son (Edward Smith Stanley, 1775–1851)

Lord Stanley and Lady Elizabeth Hamilton (see also 49.7.57) married on June 23, 1774. She was the only daughter and eventual sole heir of the sixth Duke of Hamilton and Brandon, while her husband succeeded as twelfth Earl of Derby in 1776. Their son, Edward, was born on April 21, 1775; Charlotte followed in the autumn of 1776, and then Elizabeth Henrietta. In the summer of 1778 the countess left her husband for John Frederick Sackville, third Duke of Dorset. The children remained with Lord Derby, who neither granted his estranged wife a divorce, nor allowed her to return. The countess died of tuberculosis in 1797, at which time the earl was free to marry the actress Elizabeth Farren (see 50.135.5).

The Museum’s picture is evidently a replica of a signed painting of the same group—which descended from the countess's daughter Lady Charlotte Hornby and belongs to the present Earl of Derby—and differs only in that the earl’s costume is slashed with white. The two canvases must date to about 1776.

Although she specialized in painting family groups, Kauffmann was not entirely successful in this case. Lady Derby is remote, while the earl’s gaze fails to encompass his handsome heir, a baby worthy of Raphael. The adults seem to be suspended above, rather than seated on, the improbable couches all’antica that Kauffmann must have invented, while the King Charles spaniels gaze out dolefully from their corner. The composition is outlandish but the portraiture honest, to judge by the young earl’s short stature and receding hairline. Nevertheless, the work suggests the degree to which the artist modified the tough-minded naturalism of her earlier style for her English patrons. The background resembles the interiors designed by Robert Adam in 1773 for the Earl's London residence (see Hugh Roberts, "The Derby House Commode," Burlington Magazine 127 [May 1985], fig. 2). Kauffmann also painted a pair of overdoors (private collection) for the Earl's town house that were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1775.

[2010; adapted from Baetjer 2009]

?Lady Elizabeth's mother, Elizabeth, Baroness Hamilton and Duchess of Argyll (until d. 1790); ?her widower, John Campbell, 5th Duke of Argyll (1790–d. 1806); ?their son, George William Campbell, 6th Duke of Argyll (1806–d. 1839); his brother, John Douglas Edward Henry Campbell, 7th Duke of Argyll, London (1839–d. 1847; his estate, 1847–55; his estate sale, Christie's, London, March 17, 1855, no. 86, as "The Earl of Derby, in a crimson silk dress, with his Countess, Lady Anne Hamilton, and the present Earl when a child, in an apartment," for £26.5.0 to Faver); Captain F. Johnston (in 1895); Bernard M. Baruch, New York (until 1959; life interest, 1959–d. 1965)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "The Eighteenth-Century Woman," December 12, 1981–September 5, 1982, unnumbered cat. (p. 52).

Peter Walch. Letter to Dean Walker. April 11, 1979, "grudgingly" accepts the picture as an autograph replica of the Knowsley version, which he hasn't seen.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 192, ill.

Angela Rosenthal. Angelika Kauffmann: Bildnismalerei im 18. Jahrhundert. Berlin, 1996, pp. 279, 288, pl. 103.

Katharine Baetjer. "British Portraits in The Metropolitan Museum of Art." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 57 (Summer 1999), pp. 42–44, ill. (color), as an autograph replica dating to 1775 or 1776 and probably commissioned by or given to Lady Derby's mother.

Emilie E. S. Gordenker. Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641) and the Representation of Dress in Seventeenth-century Portraiture. Turnhout, Belgium, 2001, pp. 78, 126 n. 125, fig. 138.

Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009, pp. 122, 124, 142–44, 189, 212, no. 64, ill. (color).

Hannah Greig. The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London. Oxford, 2013, p. 204, fig. 37.

Old Masters Evening Sale. Christie's, London. July 8, 2021, p. 64, under no. 14, fig. 1 (color), presents a related painting of the countess and her son with her half-sister, Lady Augusta Campbell (1760–1831) playing the harp.