Mary, Duchess of Lennox and Richmond (1622–1685) with her lady’s maid, the dwarf, Anne Shepherd, with lettering and inscription lower left: Mary duchess of Richmond daughter of Duke of Buckingham Vandyck pinx., inv. no. 49.17.2, oil on canvas, 207.5 x 120 cm, framed

Provenance:
coll. James Stuart, Duke of Lennox;
coll. Rudolph Feilding, 9th Earl of Denbigh, 8th Earl of Desmond, Newnham Paddox/Warwickshire;
The William Randolph Hearst Collection, San Francisco (c. 1945);
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (inv. no. 947, c. 1950);
private collection, Tokyo (1965);
coll. Thorsten and Diana Kreuger, Geneva (1975–1998).

Literature:
E. Schäffer, Van Dyck - Des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart and Leipzig 1909, p. 364 (as a work by van Dyck);
L. Cust, Anthony van Dyck, 1910, p. 278, no. 127;
G. Glück, Van Dyck - Des Meisters Gemälde, Stuttgart - New York - London 1931, p. 477 (as a work by van Dyck);
W. R. Valentiner, ‘Van Dyck’s Portrait of Mary Villiers’, in: Bulletin of the Art Division, Los Angeles County Museum, Fall 1949, p. 1315; Catalogue of Paintings II, Los Angeles County Museum, 1954, p. 25, pl. 20 (as a work by van Dyck);
E. Larsen, L’Opera Completa di Van Dyck, Milano 1980, no. 947, tav. LXII;
E. Larsen, The Paintings of Anthony van Dyck, Freren 1988, vol. I, p. 379, ill. 423, vol. II, pp. 382-83, cat. no. 974 (as a work by van Dyck);
S. Barnes, N. de Porter, O. Millar and H. Vey, Van Dyck, A complete catalogue of the paintings, Yale 2003, p. 590, no. IV. 206 (as a “version of the painting in the collection of the Duke of Marlborough, Blenheim Palace”).

Lady Mary Villiers, daughter of the 1st Duke of Buckingham, grew up as a ward of the Earl of Pembroke at Wilton. Her first marriage in 1634 was to his eldest son, Charles, Lord Herbert. In 1637 she married James Stuart, the 4th Duke of Lennox and 1st Duke of Richmond, a cousin of the King. The third marriage of the widowed duchess, who was lady of the bedchamber to Queen Catharine of Braganza, was to Colonel Thomas Howard of the ducal House of Norfolk. The dwarf, Anne Shepherd, stands alongside the duchess proffering gloves to her on a silver tablet. The King married her to another dwarf, Richard Gibson, who was a talented miniature painter, in the employ of the 4th Earl of Pembroke, Lady Mary’s first father-in-law, in the 1630s. Their marriage produced several children of normal stature.