George Romney (1734-1802), (SH) PORTRAIT OF ISABELLA, COUNTESS OF GLENCAIRN, FULL LENGTH, STANDING WITH HER RIGHT ARM RESTING ON A PEDESTAL SUPPORTING A VASE, WEARING A LONG WHITE DRESS WITH A BLUE SASH AND RED STOLE, A LANDSCAPE BEYOND Oil on canvas 178 x 122cm Provenance: Cunningham Graham M.C.D. Borden; sale, Plaza Hotel, New York, 13 February 1913, lot 35 ($57,000 to Agnew); with Knoedler & Co., New York; Mrs E.H. Harriman, New York; sale, Parke-Bernet, 24 October 1946, lot 27 ($5,700); purchased for the main staircase at Saling Hall at Christie's, 12 April 1991, lot 25. Exhibited: Knoedler & Co, January 1912, no.31. Literature: H Ward and W Roberts, Romney: Catalogue Raisonné of his Works, 1904, II, p. 69. Lady Isabella Erskine (1734-1824) was the second daughter of Henry, 10th Earl of Buchan. In 1770, she married William Leslie Hamilton, Attorney-General of the Leeward Islands, who died in 1780. She returned to England penniless and Lord Nelson supported her. She married secondly, in 1785, the Hon. and Rev. John Cunningham, later 15th Earl of Glencairn. Sittings are recorded as Lady Isabella Hamilton in 1777, 1780, 1782 and 1783, as Lady Bell Cunningham in 1788, and as the Countess of Glencairn in 1791. A note in Romney's ledger records two full lengths and a half length of the sitter; the present portrait is presumably one of the former, possibly the unfinished version mentioned, which has been slightly cut down, as the other may be the full length at Parham House. A half length portrait is recorded as formerly belonging to Henry Phipps in New York.