Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces

1763–65

Sir Joshua Reynolds
English, 1723–1792

Lady Sarah Bunbury was famous as the society beauty who attracted the attention of the future King George III when she was only fifteen. George was persuaded to marry a German princess instead of her, and a year after the royal marriage, Lady Sarah wed Sir Charles Bunbury in a match that lasted only a short while. In this portrait, Sir Joshua Reynolds—the first president of the Royal Academy and a champion of the importance of classical artistic models—conferred upon her a ﬂattering honorary citizenship in the ancient world. Dressed in a loose, vaguely Roman costume and surrounded by the art and artifacts of antiquity, Lady Sarah is cast as a devotee of the Three Graces, symbols of generosity and the mythical companions of Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. Lady Sarah pours a libation into a smoking tripod, and one of the Graces seems to offer her a wreath, as if inviting the aristocratic beauty to join their number. As an academician, Reynolds valued historical subjects, but as a practicing painter, he made his living largely through portraiture. In this and other grand portraits, he found a way of combining the requirements of his patrons with the prestige of the classical tradition.

Status: On View, Gallery 218
Department: Painting and Sculpture of Europe

Artist: Sir Joshua Reynolds
Title: Lady Sarah Bunbury Sacrificing to the Graces
Place: England (Artist's nationality)
Date: 1763–1765
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 242.6 × 151.5 cm (95 1/2 × 59 3/4 in.)
Credit Line: Mr. and Mrs. W. W. Kimball Collection
Reference Number: 1922.4468
IIIF Manifest The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world. Learn more.: https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/4788/manifest.json

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London, Society of Artists, 1765, no. 104, as “A lady sacrificing to the graces, whole length.”
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Detroit Institute of Arts, Romantic Art in Britain: Paintings and Drawings, 1760–1860, 1968, no. 6, traveled to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
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London, Royal Academy of Arts, Reynolds, 1986, no. 57.

Commissioned by Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, sixth Bt. (d. 1821), husband of the sitter, apparently for 250 gns [Malcolm Cormack, “The Ledgers of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” Walpole Society 42 (1968–70, pp. 112, 145]; by descent to his nephew’s grandson, Sir Henry Charles John Bunbury, tenth Bt., Barton Hall and Mildenhall, Suffolk, to at least 1905 [Armstrong 1905]. Charles J. Wertheimer (d. 1911), London, by 1908 [according to London 1908]; sold Christie’s, London, May 10, 1912, no. 63, to Sulley [see London 1986]. Henry Reinhardt Gallery, New York and Chicago, by 1915; sold by Reinhardt to Mrs. W. W. Kimball (d. 1921), Chicago, 1915 [see American Art News 1915]; on loan to the Art Institute of Chicago from 1920; bequeathed to the Art Institute, 1922.

Mannings 279

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