Portrait of a Seated Woman

Description

Antonis Mor, who worked in Spain and the Low Countries, was court painter to Spanish king Philip II. He used a seated three-quarter-length format for sitters who did not belong to the nobility, making them appear more approachable. The woman represented here (along with her husband, whose portrait is now in the North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh) probably belonged to the merchant elite of Antwerp. Her cap and braid-trimmed bodice were fashionable for Flemish women in the mid-16th century.

Provenance

Sir Richard Worsley, Bart. (d. 1805), Appuldurcombe, Isle of Wight, by 1804, as pendant to a Portrait of a Seated Man [Worsley 1804]; by descent to his niece Henrietta Anna Maria Charlotte Bridgeman, who in 1806 married Charles, 2nd Baron Yarborough (1781–1846; created Earl of Yarborough 1837), Brocklesby Park, Lincolnshire, and London [Waagen 1854 and 1857; for this descent, see Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 21, Oxford, 1973, p. 952; and Burke’s Peerage, 105th ed., London, 1970, p. 2893]; by descent to Charles, 4th Earl of Yarborough. Robert Langton Douglas, London [according to undated notes, Katherine Moore, Knoedler, to Barry Hannegan, North Carolina Museum of Art, copy in curatorial file]. Knoedler, New York, Oct. 1916 [notes cited above [according to notes cited above, this transaction had Knoedler stock number 13970, which is and with other numbers in a photograph of the reverse taken before the removal of the cradle]; Andrew W. Mellon, Pittsburgh, July–Dec. 1918; Knoedler, New York, 1918 [notes cited above; this transaction had Knoedler stock number 14555]; sold to J. Horace Harding (d. 1929), New York, 1925 [Harding lent this portrait and its pendant to London 1927]; estate of Mrs. J. Horace Harding [With Knoedler from September to December 1937 (no. CA1151), and lent through Saint James O’Toole Galleries, New York, to the 1940–41 exhibition]; sold, Parke-Bernet Galleries, New York, Mar. 1, 1941, no. 57, to Knoedler as agent for the Art Institute.

Portrait of a Seated Woman

Anthonis Mor

c. 1565

Accession Number

40599

Medium

Oil on panel, mounted on aluminum sheet

Dimensions

121.8 × 88.8 cm (48 × 34 15/16 in.); Framed: 151.2 × 120.1 × 10.2 cm (59 1/2 × 47 1/4 × 4 in.)

Classification

oil on panel

Museum

The Art Institute of Chicago

Chicago, United States

Credit Line

Edward E. Ayer Fund