Lady Sophia Vane-Tempest Stewart
1983
165 x132
Private Collection
The tendency to use the fluid brushwork of Baroque painting for narrative purpose, such as Durand employed in his first full-length English portrait, Lady Sophia Vane-Tempest Stewart, are apparent in the tradition of English portraiture. Reynolds put the sublimity of Antiquity into portraiture in an early stage. Mrs. Musters (1758-1819), renowned for her beauty, is depicted as Hebe, the handmaid of the gods, filling the bowl for Jupiter.
Frances Duncombe was born in 1757, the only daughter of Anthony Duncombe and Frances Bathurst. Gainsborough’s portrait of her reveals the artist’s admiration for Van Dyck, not only in its elegant proportions, graceful pose, and Arcadian setting, but even in the costume, which recalls fashions of the seventeenth century, as Durand's portrait of Lucy O'Donnell recalls the fashions of the twenty-first.
Pasiphae
2002
76 x 61
Another English portrait, reminiscent of Durand's Pasiphae both in the manner of execution and the relationship of the subject to the landscape, is Pinkie by Thomas Lawrence. This portrait was executed when the artist was only twenty-five and shortly after his election to the Royal Academy. Pasiphae, like Pinkie, is an extraordinarily fresh and lively performance. Both young women, probably more or less the same age, dominate the landscape, their hair and frocks blown by the same English winds. The tentative movement of the two teenage girls, in conjunction with an intense gaze, gives a sense of immediacy to the composition and reveals an unique rapport between the respective artists and their subjects which spans the ages.
Detail, Lucy O'Donnell at The Seven Sisters
Durand has depicted Mrs O’Donnell not far from her birthplace, The Seven Sisters, Sussex, chalk cliffs that are found at the point where the South Downs meet the sea; the Sisters were created when ancient rivers carved valleys into the chalk, sculpting seven peaks. Haven Brow, the highest of them at 253 feet (77 metres), stands majestically to the west of her other sisters, who in order are called Short Brow, Rough Brow, Brass Point, Flagstaff Point, Baily's Brow and Went Hill Brow. Looking back towards France, Mrs O’Donnell, with the hem of her di Lisi frock soaked, makes her way from La Manche to the foot of the ancient cliffs.
Lucy O'Donnell, www.lovedeanlarder.com
Ben de Lisi, www.bendelisi.com
The Web Gallery of Art, www.wga.hu
The Wallace Collection, www.wallacecollection.org
Kenwood House, www.english-heritage.org.uk
The Frick Collection, www.frick.org
The Huntington Gallery, www.huntington.org
Seven Sisters Country Park, www.sevensisters.org.uk
Photographs of The Seven Sisters © Durand, 2007
Design by Idea Fine Art, London and Sussex 2007
