Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan (Hester Jane Ogle, 1775/76–1817) and Her Son (Charles Brinsley Sheridan, 1796–1843)

Hester (or Esther) Jane Ogle was the youngest of five daughters of the Very Reverend Newton Ogle of Kirkley, dean of the cathedral at Winchester and prebendary (honorary canon) of Durham. She married the Right Honorable Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751–1816) as his second wife in 1795, and their only son, Charles, was born in 1796. Sheridan, the dramatist, had been the manager of London’s Drury Lane Theatre since 1776 and is perhaps best known as the author of The School for Scandal, which was first performed there in 1777. Elected to Parliament in 1780, he was a well-known Whig politician and orator. Hester Sheridan died at forty-one on October 27, 1817.

The portrait was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1797 to mixed reviews. Anthony Pasquin (1797) found Hoppner's depiction of Mrs. Sheridan unflattering, and noted that the attitude of the figures was borrowed from the Faun Bearing a Kid (Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid), a famous restored antique marble thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original, of which the Royal Academy had acquired a cast in 1781. Pasquin described the child as “a theft” from Sir Joshua Reynolds, and the motif does relate to that used by Reynolds for his half-length of Mrs. Payne-Gallwey with her son (Taft Museum of Art, Cincinnati), which had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1779 and engraved by John Raphael Smith in 1780.

As a portrait in the semidisguise of a genre scene, the picture was unusual: a prominent person, in rustic, natural colors, carrying her child, who wears a torn hat, on her back and holding a pitcher that was evidently to be filled from a stream. The donkeys and cottage reinforce the connection with country life. This was a curious way to show the young wife of one of London’s most cosmopolitan public figures. At about the same time as the present work, Hoppner painted a beautiful three-quarter-length disguised portrait of Lady Anne Fitzroy with a kerchief on her head and one of her two daughters clinging to her shoulder (Stratfield Saye Preservation Trust).

The present portrait was engraved in 1800 by T. Nugent. A small copy after the painting belonged to W. Clarkson Wallis, Brighton (sold, Phillips, London, April 7, 1998, no. 155, ill.).

[2010; adapted from Baetjer 2009]

the sitter's brother, Henry Bertram Ogle, Kirkley Hall, Northumberland (by 1818–d. 1835); by descent to Newton Charles Ogle, Kirkley Hall (1892–at least 1910); [Davis Brothers, London, until 1912; sold for £16,000 to Duveen]; [Duveen, London, 1912–17; sold for $305,000 to Tucker]; Mr. and Mrs. Carll Tucker, New York (1917–his d. 1956); Mrs. Carll Tucker, New York (1956–65)

London. Royal Academy. May 1–June 17, 1797, no. 190 (as "Portrait of a lady").

London. Royal Academy of Arts. "Winter Exhibition," January 3–March 12, 1910, no. 115 (as "Portraits of Mrs. Sheridan and Son," lent by Newton C. Ogle).

New York. World's Fair. "Masterpieces of Art: European & American Paintings, 1500–1900," May–October 1940, no. 142 (lent by Mr. and Mrs. Carll Tucker, New York).

Monthly Mirror (June 1797), p. 344 [see Ref. McKay and Roberts 1909], mentions the picture as having much general excellence.

A. Pasquin [John Williams]. Critical Guide to the Exhibition of the Royal Academy. 1797, p. 15 [see Ref. McKay and Roberts 1909], misidentifies the sitter as Mrs. Siddons; finds the portrait of the lady "so vulgar, if not meretricious, that we can scarcely be led to believe it is a faithful delineation"; notes that her attitude "is borrowed from the Faun bearing the Kid" and calls the child "a theft . . . from the children of Reynolds".

St. James's Chronicle (1797), p. 190 [see letter of March 19, 1984 in archive file], identifies the sitters as Mrs. Sheridan and her child; describes the picture as having great strength and force of coloring in addition to a picturesque design, and "an excellent subject independent of its being a portrait".

Lady's Monthly Museum 12 (January 1804), ill. opp. p. 1 (detail, engraving by K. Mackenzie) [see Ref. McKay and Roberts 1909].

W. Fraser Rae. Sheridan: A Biography. London, 1896, vol. 2, ill. opp. p. 200 (detail, engraving by G. J. Stodart).

H. P. K. Skipton. John Hoppner. London, 1905, pp. 82–83, 150, 171, ill. opp. p. 96, points out that the 1797 Royal Academy show was a triumph for Hoppner, who sent twelve portraits and one fancy subject; describes Mrs. Sheridan as "a very convincing figure, natural and homely, effectually refuting the charge so commonly brought against Hoppner of making all his women beautiful, whether they were actually so or not".

William McKay and W[illiam]. Roberts. John Hoppner, R.A. London, 1909, pp. 235–36, 318, as the property of Newton C. Ogle, Esq.

[W.] F[raser]. R[ae]. in Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Sidney Lee. Vol. 18, New York, 1909, p. 85.

William McKay and W[illiam]. Roberts. Supplement and Index to John Hoppner, R.A. London, 1914, p. 47.

Freeman O'Donoghue. Catalogue of Engraved British Portraits Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. Vol. 4, London, 1914, p. 86.

Maurice Harold Grant. A Chronological History of the Old English Landscape Painters. Vol. 4, reprint, 1971–74. Leigh-on-Sea, 1959, p. 321.

Louise d'Argencourt in William Bouguereau, 1825–1905. Exh. cat., Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. Montreal, 1984, fig. 68, suggests it as a possible source for Bouguereau.

John Wilson. "The Romantics, 1790–1830." The British Portrait, 1660–1960. Woodbridge, England, 1991, pp. 279–82, pl. 267, calls it "distinctly 'un-ideal'," and "the earliest full-length portrait painted as a genre scene"; notes that the motif is borrowed from Reynolds's Mrs. Payne Gallwey and her son (Taft Museum, Cincinnati), which derives in turn from the antique "Faun and a Kid" (Prado, Madrid; a cast belonged from 1781 to the Royal Academy); mentions also the influence of Gainsborough and suggests that in its rusticity Hoppner may have intended Mrs. Sheridan's portrait to suggest deeper social meaning.

John Human Wilson. "The Life and Work of John Hoppner (1758–1810)." PhD diss., Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 1992, vol. 1, pp. 199–202; vol. 2, fig. 60.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 199, ill.

Katharine Baetjer. British Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1575–1875. New York, 2009, pp. 188, 194–96, no. 95, ill. (color).

There are four engravings after this painting:
T. Nugent, stipple engraving (whole length), 1800, 23 7/8 x 14 3/4 in.
K. Mackenzie, engraving of detail (head of Mrs. Sheridan) in Lady's Monthly Museum 12 (January 1804), 3 1/2 x 2 3/4 in.
G. J. Stodart, steel engraving of detail (head and torso of Mrs. Sheridan and her child) for Sheridan: A Biography by W. Fraser Rae, 1896
T. G. Appleton, mezzotint, 1913, 25 7/8 x 17 1/8 in.

Hoppner also painted a portrait of Mr. Sheridan (ill., Connoisseur 5 [1903], p. 85), which was exhibited at the Old Masters Gallery in 1907 and was the property of a London dealer in 1926.