caption

Godfrey Kneller, Sarah Hussey Apreece

Photo courtesy of Dave Penman (All rights reserved)

Details

Country House
Doddington Hall
Title(s)
Sarah Hussey Apreece
Date
c.mid–1690s
Location
The Great Hall
Medium and support
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
Overall height: 213 cm, Overall width: 118 cm
Artist
Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723)
Catalogue Number
DN2
Inscription
  • Lettered lower left 'SARAH HUSSEY' and lower right 'KNELLER'

Description

The portrait is thought to represent Sarah Hussey Apreece (1672–1749), one of the four daughters and eventual heiress of Thomas Hussey, second Baronet, of Honington, Lincolnshire and Sarah Langham, daughter of Sir John Langham. She married Robert Apreece (c.1677–1744) of Washingley, Huntingdonshire. Their children included Thomas Hussey Apreece (c.1702–1777), who inherited the estates at Honington and Washingley, and Rhoda Apreece, who inherited Doddington Hall and who in 1724 was to marry Captain Francis Blake Delaval. For a history of the Apreece family and estates at Washingley and Honington, see Nick Kingsley’s Landed Families blogspot.1

The picture has at some stage been extended from a three-quarter- to a full-length portrait, quite probably by a member of Kneller’s workshop. Although the present portrait and DN22 have both been described traditionally as depictions of Sarah Hussey, the wife of Robert Apreece, a comparison between the faces of the two sitters suggests that they might not be the same person, even allowing for different artists and styles. It is possible therefore that DN22 (which does not have a sitter’s name inscribed) is not Sarah Hussey Apreece but her younger sister, Elizabeth (1688–1724). As Cole noted, in the late nineteenth century the present portrait hung in the Long Gallery as ‘a companion picture’ to Sarah Hussey’s sister Rebecca (DN1).

by Martin Postle

Footnotes

  1. http://landedfamilies.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/157-apreece-of-washingley-hall.html (accessed 9 October 2017).

    1

Related catalogue items from Doddington Hall

  • Castle Howard Doddington Hall

    A West View from Edward Hussey Delaval's House in London

    George Arnald, figures by George Francis Joseph, 1813

  • Castle Howard Doddington Hall

    The Bay of Naples

    Daniel de Bondt, c.1661–71

  • Castle Howard Doddington Hall

    Robert Pregion Hurton

    circle of Thomas Hudson, c.1747