This striking portrait depicts the celebrated seventeenth century court beauty, Mary Sackville (n�e Compton), Countess of Dorset (1669-1691) wearing a gold dress and ermine-trimmed cloak. Painted circa 1690, its extravagant grand manner is distinctive of Kneller�s work from this period, where the use of full-length swaggering poses and a heightened sense of movement and physical presence were employed. Several versions exist particularly as she was a renowned court beauty. Images of well-known society individuals were in demand and the portrait studios thereby created several duplicates, and on occasion, many variations of them. One such example is a painting, signed by Kneller, at Knole Park in Kent, home of the sitter and her husband (see photo), and is an almost full duplicate of our painting.The Countess was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Mary II and one of the Hampton Court Beauties, painted by Sir Godfrey Kneller for Queen Mary. Her father was James Compton, 3rd Earl of Northampton, and her was Mary Noel, daughter of Baptist Noel, 3rd Viscount Campden. In 1685 she married Charles Sackville, 6th Earl of Dorset and 1st Earl of Middlesex (died 1706). Their only son, Lionel Cranfield Sackville, became seventh Earl of Dorset on his father�s death, and later first Duke. Charles and Mary also had one daughter, Lady Mary Sackville (1688 � 1705), who married Henry Somerset, 2nd Duke of Beaufort.Charles was born during the Civil War, and was the son of Richard Sackville, 5th Earl of Dorset (1622�1677) and Lady Frances Cranfield, sister and heiress of the 3rd Earl of Middlesex, to whose estates he succeeded in 1674, being created Baron Cranfield, of Cranfield in the County of Middlesex, and Earl of Middlesex in 1675. Three years later, on the death of his father in 1677, he became 6th Earl of Dorset and inherited Knole. Thus began the assembly at Copt Hall (and later, at Knole) of the outstanding collection of 17th-century furniture, textiles and portraits...