This ravishing portrait depicting Gertrude Savile, Marchioness of Halifax, is one of the most significant newly discovered artworks by Mary Beale to appear on the market in recent years. Painted at the height of Beale’s professional career it is a sublime addition to the artist’s few surviving large-scale portraits. Gertrude, Marchioness of Halifax was the youngest daughter of the Honourable William Pierrepont (1607-1678) and Elizabeth Harries (c. 1610-1657). Her father was an influential politician and Member of Parliament during the Civil War and Protectorate and in 1660, after the Restoration of Charles II, was elected to the new Council of State. William Pierrepont and his family were important patrons of Mary Beale, who painted his portrait in the mid-1670s, at around the same time she painted the portraits of his daughter and son-in-law, the Duke and Duchess of Newcastle. Likewise, the family of Gertrude’s husband, George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, were also patrons of Beale with George’s Uncle the Honourable Henry Coventry sitting to Beale in 1677. It was at this time in 1676/7 that Mary ’s husband Charles noted George sitting for his portrait, his second recorded sitting with his first in 1673/4. It is almost certainly the result of this second sitting that is now located in the National Portrait Gallery.

It is highly probably that Gertrude’s husband Lord Halifax commissioned Mary Beale to paint his wife’s portrait to be hung as a pendant to his own slightly earlier depiction. It was in 1679, around the time this portrait was painted, that Lord Halifax had been elevated in the peerage to the title of Earl of Halifax and thus he may have wished to commission his wife’s portrait to celebrate this. The fact that Beale has, somewhat unusually, placed the sitter looking rightwards within the composition, rather than the traditional leftward facing, would appear to support the portrait being a pendant

When this portrait was painted in c. 1679, Mary Beale was at the height of her artistic success. 1677 had been Beale’s most profitable year on record with her painting eighty-three commissions earning her the considerable sum of £429. If looking at Beale’s portrait of Katherine Lowther, Viscountess Lonsdale, dating from this period, it is clear to see the remarkable stylistic and compositional similarities with this work. Katherine was the daughter of Sir Henry Thynne and Mary Coventry and thus was a cousin of Lord and Lady Halifax. Lady Lonsdale’s portrait was one of twenty-four commissioned by the Lowther family in 1677, a significant number of which were gifted to Lady Lowther’s brother Thomas Thynne, 1st Viscount Weymouth and remain with the family today at Longleat. It is known that the Lowther’s were charged £11 for each of the portraits commissioned of this size, £10 for the portrait and an additional £1 for added ultramarine glaze, as is also seen in the bright blue drapery in this portrait. The commissions dating from the 1670s show that Beale painted some of the most important people of the Restoration Court and was clearly a popular artist amongst the nobility, despite the fact that the King’s Principal Painter in Ordinary, Sir Peter Lely, was still working until his death in 1680. Lord and Lady Halifax lived in the vast Halifax House in St James's Square. This was a matter of meters away from Mary Beale’s house and studio on Pall Mall located next to the Golden Ball inn, so would be particularly convenient for sittings. Indeed, Charles Beale notes that in 1676 Beale painted a copy of Sir Peter Lely ’s earlier portrait of Gertrude, which was almost certainly hanging in Halifax House at the time.

Halifax House was the grandest property in St James's Square and boasted 50 rooms with the luxury of river water piped into the Marquess’s bathroom. This portrait was most likely hung there until Gertrude left Halifax House for a large house on Park Place in 1698. It seems most probable that Lady Halifax took the portrait with her and from here left it to her grandson, Philip Dormer Stanhope, the future 4th Earl of Chesterfield and the son of her only daughter, Elizabeth 'Betty ' Stanhope, Countess of Chesterfield, as her husband's portrait went instead to his Savile cousins at Rufford Abbey. Philip Stanhope's s father, Lady Halifax 's son-in-law, the 3rd Earl of Chesterfield, was absent throughout his son’s upbringing and, after the death of Gertrude’s daughter in 1708, the young Philip was brought up almost exclusively by his grandmother until he went to university at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Lady Halifax was an important member of high society and, despite her husband's death in 1695, continued to be respected at Court. In 1689 she was made the Godmother to William, Duke of Gloucester, the only son of Queen Anne to survive past infancy. Lady Halifax doted on her grandson and Matthew Maty, Lord Chesterfield's physician and first biographer wrote of her 'Lady Halifax 's understanding and wit were still exceeded by the goodness of her heart'. This portrait would have thus acted as a reminder of his beloved grandmother after her death in 1727.

After inheriting this portrait, Lord Chesterfield would have taken it from London to his country residence at Bretby Hall in Derbyshire, where it would remain until it was in turn inherited by George Herbert, 5th Earl of Carnarvon after the death of his grandmother, Anne Weld-Forester, Dowager Countess of Chesterfield in 1885. After this, Lord Carnarvon had brought the portrait to his London residence at 13 Berkeley Square where it was hanging when Christie’s sold it in the 1918 Bretby Heirlooms sale. It is only in recent years that the life and career of Mary Beale has truly come to light, the unfortunate consequence of a 19th century disposition to male artists. However as academia further explores Beale's work, her remarkable talent to capture a sitter's personality has become evident. The fact that during her lifetime she painted some of the most notable members of society, and was praised by the likes of George Vertue who described her as having "painted in oil very well" and that she " work'd with a wonderfull body of colors" says that she was truly considered one of the great artists of her day. We are proud that the discovery of this engaging portrait now adds to the expanding canon of British art by female artists.