Art Institute of ChicagoPublic domain

Sarah Dupont

Thomas Gainsborough · c. 1777–79

Provenance

Ownership history

Presumably painted for Philip Dupont, husband of the sitter and the artist’s brother-in-law (died 1788), Sudbury; by descent to his grandson Richard Gainsborough Dupont (died 1874), also of Sudbury, by 1856 [Fulcher 1856]; sold with his collection, Wheeler and Westoby, Sudbury, May 29, 1874, no. 127, as “Mrs. Philip Dupont, wife of the above [no. 126]”, to J.H. Chance for 36 gns. [label on the picture’s stretcher, the price given in an annotated copy of the catalogue at Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, the buyer in Graves 1918, p. 328; the supposed pendant, no. 126 in the sale and described as “Philip Dupont, the artist’s nephew [sic]” was also acquired by Chance and is now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, but see Warner 1996]; J. H. Chance, to at least 1887 [Ipswich 1887]. Probably William Carr (died 1925), Ditchingham Hall, Norfolk [in a letter of August 22, 1993 in curatorial file, his granddaughter, Countess Ferrers, suggested that he acquired it when he enlarged Ditchingham Hall about 1911]. His son, Brigadier William Greenwood Carr, D.S.O., Ditchingham Hall (died 1982), certainly by 1955 [annotated photograph in the Ellis Waterhouse archive, Paul Mellon Center, London]; by descent to his daughter, Annabel Mary, Countess Ferrers. Richard L. Feigen and Co., New York, by 1986; sold to the Art Institute, 1987.

Recorded by Art Institute of Chicago.

Exhibitions

Ipswich Fine Art Club, Ipswich, Suffolk, Works by Gainsborough, Constable, and Old Suffolk Artists, 1887, no. 129, as “Mrs. Phillip Dupont, Wife of the Artist’s Nephew [sic]”.
Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, Suffolk, Gainsborough’s House (opening exhibition), 1961, no. 13.
London, National Portrait Gallery, “Gainsborough’s Family Album, November 15, 2018-February. 3, 2019, p. 156-157; Princeton University Art Museum, February 23- June 5, 2019.

Literature

George Williams Fulcher, Life of Thomas Gainsborough, R.A. (London, 1856), p. 206.
Walter Armstrong, Gainsborough and his Place in English Art (London, 1898), p. 194.
M. H. Spielmann, “ A Note on Thomas Gainsborough and Gainsborough Dupont,” The Volume of the Walpole Society 5 (1915-17), p. 100.
Algernon Graves, Art Sales from early in the Eighteenth Century to Early in the Twentieth Century, vol. 1 (London, 1918), p. 328.
J.W. Goodison, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge: Catalogue of Paintings, vol. 3, British School (Cambridge, 1977), p. 82, under no. 915.
Hugh Belsey, Gainsborough’s Family, exh. cat. Gainsborough’s House, Sudbury, 1988, pp. 19 ill, 20, 24 n. 14, 38, 62.
Malcolm Warner in Susan Wise and Malcolm Warner. French and British Paintings from 1600 to 1800 in The Art Institute of Chicago. A Catalogue of the Collection (Chicago, 1996), pp. 232-235, ill.
Sotheby’s, New York, 12 November 1997, British Paintings 1500-1850, p. 76, under no. 71.
The Letters of Thomas Gainsborough, ed. John Hayes (New Haven and London, 2001), p. 156, ill.
William Vaughan, Gainsborough (London, 2002), p. 16, fig. 8.
Solkin, David H., Ann Bermingham, and Susan Sloman, Gainsborough’s Family Album, Exh. cat. (The National Portrait Gallery, 2018) pp. 156-157

Comparables