Sold....portrait of a Lady in Grey C.1720; Attributed to Enoch Seeman

A fine quality portrait of an attractive young lady sitting in an Arcadian landscape.

The mythical land of Arcady or Arcadia was a domain where love and happiness reigned and was a fashionable setting for portraiture and literature.

The sitter has flowers in her lap which had a strong symbolic meaning at the time. Fertility and future child bearing are signified, the flowers also are a reminder that youth, and indeed life, are fleeting things. However, the large rose dominating the flowers is a symbol of love and its power. This may well have been a portrait to commemorate an engagement to marriage.

The young lady conveys a sense of calm and serenity as she looks confidently at the viewer.

On the reverse of the painting is an old label mistakenly identifying the sitter as Maria Gunning, Countess of Coventry (1733-1760).

ENOCH SEEMAN (c.1694-1744) Enoch Seeman the Younger was born in Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland.. His father, also Enoch was born around 1661, and the Seeman family were painters. Having been brought to London from his home in Flanders by his father in 1704, the younger Seeman's painting career began with a group portrait of the Bisset family in the style of the portraitist Godfrey Kneller, now held at Castle Forbes in Grampian, Scotland, and dated by an inscription 1708.

As a painter to the British royal court he completed portraits of George I in 1730, in the robes of his coronation and of George II some years later. The first of these pictures is held at the Middle Temple in London, England, and the second is at Windsor Castle in Berkshire, England, part of the Royal Collection. The Yale University Art Gallery owns a portrait of Elihu Yale in 1717 by Seeman and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, USA owns his rendering of Sir James Dashwood, described by the Grove Dictionary of Art as 'Exceptionally lively'.

Seeman's work is represented in the National Portrait Gallery in London. The National Trust owns three examples of his work - at Dunham Massey, Oxburgh Hall and Belton House.

SIZE: 53 x 43.25 inches inc. frame.

PROVENANCE: A private Surrey collection for many years. Verso: an old label for 'The Farnham Depository' and a handwritten inscription 'Maria Gunning, afterwards Countess of Coventry. On my decease this picture to be delivered to Nicholas Tyrell-Evans Esq; K.S. Wasey'.