PROVENANCE
Prints and a Few Drawings from Great Collections of the Past
  1. Master MR, Christ on the Cross
  2. Dürer, St. Bartholomew
  3. Dürer, Christ Before Caiaphas
  4. Raimondi, Philosophy
  5. Raimondi, Façade with Caryatids
  6. Beham, Job Conversing
  7. Beham, Satyr Sounding a Horn
  8. Beham, Peasant Couple Walking
  9. Caraglio, Martyrdom of St. Paul
  10. Aldegrever, Standard Bearer
  11. Pencz, Feeding the Hungry
  12. Pencz, Artemisia Preparing
  13. Falconetto, Tomb Surmounted
  14. Claesz, St. Peter Seated
  15. Treu, Noble Dancers
  16. Master FP, Hercules Killing
  17. Brun, February
  18. Solis, Arithmetria
  19. de Bruyn, The Circumcision
  20. Sadeler, Virgin and Child
  21. Goltzius, A Young Man
  22. Matham, The Planets
  23. Brizio, Extensive Landscape
  24. van de Velde, Fête Villageoise
  25. van de Velde, Backgammon
  26. van Uyttenbroek, Tobias
  27. van Uyttenbroek, Bacchus
  28. Rembrandt, The Small Lion Hunt
  29. Hollar, Woman with Headdress
  30. Saftleven, Dutch Peasant
  31. Ostade, Bust of a Peasant
  32. Stoop, A Grazing Horse
  33. Fyt, Set of Animals
  34. Bega, The Three Drinkers
  35. Anonymous, Landscape
  36. Nanteuil, Charles Benoise
  37. Nanteuil, Cardinal Mazarin
  38. Nanteuil, Pierre Seguier
  39. van Vliet, St. Jerome Sitting
  40. Cossin, Ornament Design
  41. Sirani, St. Eustace
  42. Somer, Hagar and Ishmael
  43. Daullé, La Muse Clio
  44. Tiepolo, The Holy Family
  45. MacArdell, Hannah, Mrs. Horneck
  46. Laurie, Elizabeth, Dutchess
  47. Denon, Village Scene
  48. Charlet, Les Français
  49. Pieraccini, Holy Family
  50. Daumier, Y n’y a rien comm’
  51. Daubigny, Les Ruines du Chateau
  52. Daubigny, Lever de Lune
  53. Meryon, Le Petit Pont
  54. Rops, La Poupée du Satyre
  55. Whistler, Old Hungerford Bridge
  56. Legros, Un Coin de Rivière
  57. Buhot, Frontispice
  58. Forain, La Rencontre
  59. Pennell, Hampton Court Palace
  60. Delâtre, Silhouette de Femme

46. Robert Laurie (1740-1804)
after Catherine Read
Elizabeth, Dutchess of Argyle

(click on image to print)
Laurie, Elizabeth, Dutchess

Elizabeth, Dutchess of Argyle

Other Images:

Mezzotint, 1771, 508 x 354 mm., Chaloner Smith 3 ii/ii (?). Superb impression on laid paper with thread margins or trimmed on the platemark; a few edge nicks and abrasions, mostly in blank paper. Smith opines that the supposed first state may be a falsification, in which case this is the only state of the print. The print is one of the few actually reproduced in Smith’s catalog, an indication that he thought highly of it. Fourteen months after the death of the Duke of Hamilton, his widow Elizabeth married Colonel John Campbell, who became Duke of Argyle in 1770, thus making her Dutchess of Argyle at the time this print was made. The original painting is in the British Royal Collection.

Provenance:
Frederic R. Halsey (Lugt 1308). Halsey (1847-1918) was a lawyer, a profession at which he spent little time, and a bibliophile and print collector, one of the most important of his era in New York. He quickly became a trustee of the New York Public Library, and he was president of the consulting committee for the print room there. His extensive and important library was sold en bloc to Henry Huntington, but his enormous collection of prints, since he had no heirs, went to auction shortly before and after his death in a series of no less than thirteen auction sales. Halsey’s taste ran principally to eighteenth-century prints: French color prints, British mezzotints, sporting prints, historical portraits and the like, together with a smattering of Whistlers and Hadens and a few classic old masters. This mezzotint portrait, No. 417 in the Anderson Galleries sale catalog of February, 1917, was sold for $50. As an indication of how collecting tastes change over time, a first state of Rembrandt’s Joseph and Potiphars wife sold the following month for $25 and brilliant impressions of Beham’s two coats of arms for $17.