Details:

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signed 'da Costa 95' upper right

Oil on Canvas

33 inches by 24 inches (39 inches by 30 inches framed)

In a remarkable period carved and giltwood frame

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Provenance:

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Emilia Frances, Lady Dilke (Paris, France)

Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, 2nd Baronet, PC

Bequeathed to Miss Gertrude Tuckwell, J.P. (suffragette, niece of Lady Dilke, and first female J.P. of London)

Gifted to Chelsea Public Library Collection (gifted by Miss Gertrude Tuckwell 1919-20) 

Collection of Mrs. Elizabeth M. Richards.

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Exhibition History:

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Exhibited at Burlington House (London) Exhibition of Important Portraits 1896.

John da Costa: A Memorial Exhibition, The Collection of Mrs Elizabeth Richards, Leighton House, 1974.

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Description:

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This masterpiece of impressionist portraiture was commissioned in Paris by the sitter, Lady Emilia Dilke, a widely renowned art historian, connoisseur, author, labour organizer and suffragist.  As a truly immortalized Victorian character, Lady Dilke's intellectual and political career profoundly influenced Victorian society, and she gained celebrity status through George Eliot's "Middlemarch" in which heroine Dorothea Casaubon was modelled after Dilke.World renowned for her progressive work on French art, Dilke spent a large part of her life in Paris, where this work was painted.  She was considered the preeminent British authority on French art, and is still admired as one of the earliest widely recognized female art connoisseurs.

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John da Costa (1867-1931) was born in Teignmouth, England and recognized as an artist of great potential early in his career by Frederick, Lord Leighton.  He received awards at the Paris Salon of 1906 and 1907, and he was a member of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.  In 1974, a memorial exhibition was dedicated to John da Costa of paintings from the collection of Mrs. Elizabeth M. Richards at Leighton House, London, in which this portrait was a featured exhibit.