Provenance
The sitter and thence by descent to the present owner

Exhibited
Birmingham, 1931 (no. 60, 'Mrs Rolleston & Child', lent by Rolleston Esq.)

Literature
A. Graves and W.V. Cronin, A History of the Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds, London, 1899-1901, vol. ii, p. 842 ('Mrs Rollestone')
David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds, New Haven and London, 2000, no. 1548, p. 398 ('Mrs Rollestone', as untraced)

Elizabeth (1752-1801) daughter of George Carr of Northumberland, married Samuel Rolleston of Great Pan Manor, Whippingham, Isle of Wight. Reynolds's Ledger records payments to the artist in 1774 and 1776, indicating that more than one picture of her was painted. Before the present portrait came to light recently the composition was known from an engraving of 1865 entitled Maternal Love. That engraving and a version of the portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds, sold in the 14 January 1994 sale at Sotheby's New York had been identified as 'Portrait of Lady Anne Butler, later Lady Ormonde and her child' (lot 83). The latter was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1871 when it belonged to the Duke of Westminster. It is half-length, whereas the present portrait is, like the engraving, fuller in format. Before being aware of the present portrait Mannings had suggested that the two portraits of Elizabeth recorded in the artist's Ledger were 'perhaps a half-length and a head-and-shoulders.' Since there is no record of Lady Anne Butler sitting for Reynolds Martin Postle suggests that one explanation is that the present portrait and the smaller one sold by Sotheby's in 1994 are in fact the two versions of Mrs Rolleston to which Mannings refers.

We are grateful to Martin Postle for his assistance in cataloguing the present work.

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Sir Joshua Reynolds P.R.A.(Plympton 1723-1792 London)Portrait of Elizabeth Rolleston, née Carr, with a child, seated in an interior

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