Alphone Kann (1870-1948), Paris;
Maurice Kann, sold his sale, Paris, 9th June 1911, lot 32, bt. Fischof;
With Duveen Brothers, London;
Edward Townsend Stotesbury (1849-1938), Whitemarsh Hall, Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania;
Lucetia Roberts, Mrs E.T. Stotesbury, his wife, by whom sold in the Stotesbury sale, Parke-
Bernet, New York, 18th November 1944, lot 4, bt. J.W. Spenser;
Stansky, by whom sold Parke Bernet, 12th December 1956, lot 19, bt. Newhouse;
With Newhouse Galleries, New York, 1958;
Private Collection, U.S.A.;
Sold Sotheby’s London, 23 November 2006, lot 58;
Private Collection, UK
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Museum of Art, Loan Exhibition from the Stotesbury Collection, 1932;
San Francisco, California Palace of the Legion of Honor, Masterpieces of English Portraiture…from the collection of the late Edward T. Stotesbury, 1941
Sir Walter Armstrong, Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1913, p. 134;
Pennsylvania Museum Bulletin, December 1932, illus. p. 20;
O'Toole Galleries, New York, Catalogue of the Paintings ... of the late Edward T. Stotesbury,
April 23 - May 10 1941, no. 12;
Art Digest, 1st May 1941, p. 8;
Art Digest, 1st June 1941, p. 19;
Connoisseur, August 1941, Vol. 108, p. 77;
Kenneth Garlick, Lawrence, 1954, p. 90;
Kenneth Garlick, 'Catalogue of the Paintings, Drawings and Pastels of Sir Thomas
Lawrence', Walpole Society, 1964, Vol. XXXIX, p. 90;
Kenneth Garlick, Sir Thomas Lawrence, 1989, pp. 195-196, no. 332 (as whereabouts unknown)
Dated by Kenneth Garlick to the years 1810-1815, Lawrence’s portrait of Miss Glover is a fine and typical example of Lawrence’s work in his middle period. If we look at the intriguing provenance of this picture we can see that it was just the kind of glamorous British portrait that was greatly in vogue with major collectors in the early part of the 20th century.
The names of the great dealer Duveen and the great collector E.T.Stotesbury tell the story only too well. Duveen was unrivalled as the supplier of all kinds of European furnishings and artworks to the American tycoons, who emerged as phenomenal art-buying class at the end of the 19th century. Stotesbury, a massively wealthy banker, would have been typical of a Duveen client. A partner first in the Philadelphia firm of Drexel & Co, and subsequently a partner in the mighty firm of J.P.Morgan he amassed a considerable fortune, a great deal of which he lavished on a number of palatial residences. Apart from a fine town house in Philadelphia, Stotesbury built three massive mansions elsewhere, the largest of which – indeed reputedly the third largest private house ever built in the United States – was Whitemarsh Hall in Wyndmoor, Pennsylvania. Exactly when Stotesbury acquired this Lawrence from Duveen is unclear, but there are fascinating photographs showing it hanging first in the Library of his Walnut Street house in Philadelphia and by 1921 in the Great Ballroom of Whitemarsh Hall. For about a century the picture remained on American soil, being acquired finally by a UK collector in 2006.