C.1750 Portrait of a Lady, Dorothy Wood; by John Heins, Fine Carved Gilded Frame, Oil on Canvas Painting

This work formed part of an ancient collection of family heirlooms of the Wood family of Bracon Ash, Norfolk. This painting, along with another (also with Titan Fine Art at the time of writing) of our sitter’s sister, descended within the family for around 275 years until recently dispersed; they are exquisite examples of Georgian portraiture in England and represents the best of the artist’s work. They are held in their original carved and gilded frames, which are absolute top quality and condition and magnificent works of art in their own right.

By tradition the sitter is Dorothy Wood. She was baptised 2nd June 1726, one of several children of Thomas Wood (1682-176) and Dorothy Huby (1700-1759). Her aunt, Jane Wood (1677-1756), was a Franciscan nun in Bruges.

In 1758 her sister, also Jane (1727–1790), whose portrait is also with Titan Fine Art at the time of writing, married Knipe Gobbet (1730/5-1791) who was Sheriff in 1768 (and Mayor in 1771) of the City of Norwich, and later Lieutenant-Colonel of the West Norfolk Regiment, in which corps he had served in for many years. Although the Wood family were Roman Catholics Knipe was a prominent local wine merchant, JP, Alderman, sheriff, mayor and Lieutenant. Roman Catholics may have paid lip service to religious conformity as they were excluded from certain areas of public life before the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. Their oldest daughter, Anne (1760-1817) famously married Dr William Compton (1733-1824), the Chancellor of Ely and the next collateral male relation to the Earl of Northampton, in 1799, in a lavish ceremony on board the Foudroyant, off Naples, where the bride was given away by the Right Hon. Lord Nelson himself.

The marriage document, signed by Lord Nelson, Lady Emma Hamilton, Captain Thomas Hardy, and others descended within the family, until recently sold, in a sale that raised worldwide interest, for £20,160. It accounts that William Compton received "a great many favours and kindnesses" from Nelson, and most especially "the kind interest" taken in sealing his union with a wife who made him "the happiest of mortals". Anne, the aforesaid spouse, said that the admiral's "good heart" had made her "as happy as I can possibly be on this earth" ... Midshipman Parsons remembered those days nostalgically, noting Emma's "graceful form" bending over her harp to bestow "heavenly music" upon the diners on the quarterdeck and the large-decked galley, flush with opera singers, that glided alongside to serenade the sunset of each day'.

Our sitter died unmarried around 1759.

John Theodore Heins (1697-1756) was a painter whose work, at his best, shows detail of an exceptionally high quality. His portraits of Anna Maria Kett nee Phillips and her husband Henry Kett, painted in 1741, are exceptional and evidence that he had the ability to portray a likeness on par with some of the best portraitists in England at the time.

Heins appears to have originated in Germany but moved to the UK and settled in Norwich around 1720. From 1720 to his death in 1756, Heins built up a fine reputation as a portrait painter and painted many members of prominent Norfolk families right up to his last year. He was commissioned in 1732 to paint a portrait of the Mayor of Norwich, Francis Arnam and also the previous year's Mayor Robert Marsh. After this Heins received regular commissions to paint Mayors and other civil dignitaries. By far the majority of his sitters are residents in Norfolk and neighbouring counties Cambridgeshire and Suffolk but he may also have received commissions from the West Country, as he is considered to have painted the portrait of Mr Gerard Hartopp, Governor of Plymouth and a collection of portraits of the Enys family who lived near Penryn in Cornwall.

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