Dressed in sapphire blue satin, with a fine lace collar accented with a large diamond pendant at her breast, the sitter in this charming portrait stares wistfully into the distance. Her double pearl-drop earrings and necklace make it clear she is a woman of noble birth. Her hair is curled and pinned fashionably atop her head, with two loose strands falling over her shoulder. Indeed, the soft pink of her cheeks and her pale complexion are made more apparent by her dark costume.

Our sitter is Lady Anne Cecil, who was the daughter of William Cecil, 2nd Earl of Salisbury (1591 – 1688) and his wife Catherine, Countess of Salisbury (d. 1673), the daughter of Thomas Howard, 1st Earl of Suffolk. William inherited the Earldom upon his father’s death in 1612, which was incidentally the same year that the heir to the British throne, Henry, Prince of Wales, died. He was made a knight of the Garter in 1624 and privy councillor in 1626 by Charles I. Until 1639, he spent much of his time improving his estates and made Hatfield House a cultural hub, patronizing the painters George Geldorp and Sir Peter Lely, and the musicians Henry Oxford and Nicholas Lanier. Thus, the family home of young Anne would have been filled with vibrant sounds and paintings by the most fashionable artists.

It is worth noting that Anne’s father was an active politician and their family, like many others, were pulled into the political upheaval of the Civil War. Salisbury was a politician that wavered between parties, and this earned him a reputation for political inconsistency – a precarious position to be as war approached. When tensions broke in 1642, it seems rather miraculous that the Hatfield family seat was saved (Fig 1). In 1648, Salisbury was part of the commission charged with negotiating an agreement with Charles I in the Isle of Wight. However, when this failed, he notably did not support the call for regicide. After the execution of Charles I, Salisbury signed the engagement drawn up by Parliament which made him faithful to a Commonwealth without king and a House of Lords. During the English Interregnum, Salisbury was first a member of the English Council of State between 1649 and 1651 and then excluded from public life during the Protectorate of 1653 to 1659. Even with the return of Charles II during the Restoration of 1660, Salisbury retired to Hatfield where he died on 3 December 1668.

In her rather short life, Anne Cecil knew only the security of the old order under King Charles I. She was baptised in the Chapel Royal, Whitehall, London, and married Algernon Percy, 10th Earl of Northumberland, who was the third, but eldest surviving son of Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland, the so-called ‘Wizard Earl’, in 1629. The pair had five children, two of whom lived to adulthood; the sprawling family homes of Petworth House, West Sussex, and Alnwick Castle, Northumberland, would have been room enough for this large family. Like his father-in-law, Algernon was a patron of the arts and laid the foundations of the family’s permanent collection. He was one of Sir Anthony van Dyck’s three main aristocratic patrons and even purchased a few Old Masters from the revered painter’s collection.[1] Our portrait bares very close resemblance to a group picture by Van Dyck of Anne, her husband, and one of their children, in the Petworth collection (fig. 2). Her costume, jewellery and expression are near-identical, leaving no doubt as to the identity of the sitter of our painting.[2]

Remigius van Leemput, or Remée as he was known by his contemporaries, was born in Antwerp about 1609 and became part of the guild of St. Luke between 1628 and 1629. During the reign of Charles I, he travelled to England and began painting for the court. Among other works he completed small oil copies of Hans Holbein’s Henry VII, Henry VIII, and their Queens at Whitehall. Given the building and all its contents were later destroyed by fire these copies are seen as important replicas of lost masterpieces. When King Charles I’s collection was sold, Van Leemput acquired Van Dyck’s great portrait of the King on horseback (The Royal Collection Trust, Windsor). It was later recovered from him, albeit with some difficulty, during the Restoration. He was a prominent and skilful copyist of paintings, particularly by Van Dyck and Lely, and is said to have told Lely that he could copy his portrait better than Lely could himself.[3] Van Leemput’s ‘cabinet’ style paintings are often misattributed to Theodore Russel (1614 – 1689), although the two have quite distinctive hands. Van Leemput died in 1675 and was buried in St Paul’s, Covenant Garden. His expertly curated collection of pictures and other works of art were advertised for sale in the London Gazette at Somerset House on 14 May 1677.

[1] https://www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/486239

[2] There exists another copy of Van Dyck’s group portrait, dated slightly later, of Anne Cecil seated alone wearing the same costume at Burghley House. This painting is however by a different hand: https://collections.burghley.co.uk/collection/lady-anne-cecil-daughter-of-william-2nd-earl-of-salisbury-1591-1668-after-sir-anthony-van-dyck-1599-1641/

[3] Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Wornum; Bathoe's Cat. of James II's Collection; Law's Cat. of the Pictures at Hampton Court; Rombouts and Lerius's Liggeren der St. Lukas Gild te Antverpen; Vertue's Diaries (Brit. Mus. Addit. MSS. 23071, &c.).