Christian Friedrich Zincke
Portrait of Sarah Churchill, Duchess of Marlborough (1660-1744), wearing black dress over white underdress, a black veil covering her blonde hair, c. 1722
Enamel on metal
Oval, 1 ¾ in (44 mm) high
Philip Mould & Co.
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com Shown here in mourning for her husband, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Blenheim, Sarah Churchill (née Jenyns), Duchess of Marlborough...
To view all current artworks for sale visit philipmould.com
Shown here in mourning for her husband, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Blenheim, Sarah Churchill (née Jenyns), Duchess of Marlborough (1684?-1767), was, unquestionably, one of the most extraordinary women of the eighteenth century.Born into an impoverished gentry family, Sarah made her name at court when in 1673 she entered into the service of Mary of Modena (1658-1718), wife of James, Duke of York, later James II (1633-1701). Independent, strong-willed and assertive, she went as far as to have her mother banished from court when she objected to her marriage to the similarly impoverished John Churchill (1650-1722) (formerly the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland (c.1640-1709), a mistress of Charles II (1630-1685)), whose impecuniousness meant that she feared the match would do little to improve the family’s fortunes.
Her mother could not, however, have been more mistaken. Churchill’s rise at court was meteoric. A shrewd politician, he positioned himself to gain a peerage from James II before abandoning him in favour of Prince William of Orange (1650-1702), who, following the success of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, replaced the Catholic James to become the new, emphatically Protestant King of England. For his loyalty, William rewarded Churchill by making him Earl of Marlborough. From this point, he became one of the most powerful figures in the realm, and his stock was only to continue to rise. In 1704, he commanded the victorious British forces at the Battle of Blenheim, thwarting the ambitions of Louis XIV of France and winning him a dukedom from a grateful nation.
Marlborough and Sarah were well matched both in their ambition and in their political alacrity. In tandem to Marlborough’s rise, Sarah had shrewdly befriended James’s daughter by his first, Protestant wife, Anne (1665-1714). Following the arrival of William, who was married to Anne’s sister Mary (1662-1694), she became again one of the major figures of the court – her status having fallen following the birth of James’s son by Mary of Modena. Following her appointments, first, as a lady of the bedchamber and, then, as Anne’s Groom of the Stool, Sarah obtained an emotional (and physical) proximity to Anne that few could rival. Anne came to be dependent on Sarah, turning to her for advice and counsel. Indeed, so strong was their bond that Anne fell profoundly in love with Sarah.
But the relationship was an unequal one. Their characters were incompatible: Sarah, a voracious reader, was fiercely intelligent, whilst Anne had no particular intellectual ambitions. Further, although their affection was certainly mutual, Sarah never loved Anne in the way that she did her. And the result was tempestuous. Following William’s death and Anne’s subsequent coronation as queen on St George’s Day in 1702, Sarah became by far the most powerful of Anne’s advisors; in the words of her biographer, ‘those who wanted to access Anne had to go through Sarah first’. [1] With this influence, she became increasingly self-confident and, convinced of her intellectual superiority, assertive, even domineering. But, she also became complacent and failed to realise that she had come to be replaced in the Queen’s affections by Abigail Hill (c.1670-1734), a cousin of Sarah’s that she herself had introduced to the court.
Following a series of bitter rows about Abigail Hill’s position, Sarah met Anne for the last time in 1710. They would from this point communicate only in writing. Following the election of the Tory party later in 1710, the next year Sarah – a staunch Whig – was stripped of all of her positions at court. When she was forced to leave her rooms in St James’s Palace, the furious Duchess of Marlborough took with her all of their furnishings, including the door locks (she even contemplated taking the chimney-breast). It seems that she was only allowed to keep the money that had been granted her in happier days to build Marlborough House, opposite St James’s, to prevent her from leaking Anne’s love letters.
Following a year spent in Holland – where her husband was already living in exile – the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough returned to Britain in 1714 to find Anne dead. But the, Hanoverian dynasty refused to allow them to enjoy the power they had enjoyed under Anne’s reign, so the couple retired to their residence in Oxfordshire, the vast pile of Blenheim Palace, which had been paid for by the nation in thanks for Marlborough’s victories.
But within a few years, in 1722, Marlborough had died. In the present work – closely related to a prototype at Blenheim by Maria Verelst (1680-1744) – we see Sarah wearing black, the colour of mourning, dating the portrait to around this time. Lady Marlborough clearly wished her mourning to be commemorated, for the present work is closely related to another portrait of her by Zincke, formerly in the Gilbert Collection.[2] Marlborough had deeply loved his wife; after his death, it was found that when his wife had cut off her prized fair hair in a fit of rage, Marlborough had lovingly plaited it and kept it in his closet. Sarah, in turn, spent the years following his death carefully curating and defending his legacy, writing a set of memoirs to make public her account of her and Anne’s falling out.
Born into a Dresden family of goldsmiths, Christian Zincke had been invited to England in either 1704 or 1706 by Charles Boit, the leading enamellist working in Britain of the day. The Marlboroughs were frequent patrons of Zincke; indeed, the earliest dated portrait that he executed in England is a 1711 portrait of the Duchess. [3] Following Boit’s flight from court in 1714 (following the spectacular failure of his project to make a commemorative enamel of the Battle of Blenheim) Zincke gained a virtual monopoly on work in enamel. By 1726, George Vertue could report that he ‘has had more persons of distinction daily sitting to him than any other painter living’.[4] It is no surprise to find the Duchess portrayed in her dramatic mourning garb by the leading enameller of the day, who had also taken her likeness in happier times.
[1] J. Falkner, ‘Churchill [née Jenyns], Sarah, duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edn.], 2008.
[2] Sarah Coffin and Bodo Hofstetter, The Gilbert Collection: Portrait Miniatures in Enamel (London, 2000), p. 117.
[3] Now in the Royal Collection, RCIN 421962
[4] W. Hoare, ‘Zincke, Christian Frederick (1684?–1767)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edn.], 2004.
Shown here in mourning for her husband, John Churchill, 1st Duke of Blenheim, Sarah Churchill (née Jenyns), Duchess of Marlborough (1684?-1767), was, unquestionably, one of the most extraordinary women of the eighteenth century.Born into an impoverished gentry family, Sarah made her name at court when in 1673 she entered into the service of Mary of Modena (1658-1718), wife of James, Duke of York, later James II (1633-1701). Independent, strong-willed and assertive, she went as far as to have her mother banished from court when she objected to her marriage to the similarly impoverished John Churchill (1650-1722) (formerly the lover of the Duchess of Cleveland (c.1640-1709), a mistress of Charles II (1630-1685)), whose impecuniousness meant that she feared the match would do little to improve the family’s fortunes.
Her mother could not, however, have been more mistaken. Churchill’s rise at court was meteoric. A shrewd politician, he positioned himself to gain a peerage from James II before abandoning him in favour of Prince William of Orange (1650-1702), who, following the success of the Glorious Revolution of 1688, replaced the Catholic James to become the new, emphatically Protestant King of England. For his loyalty, William rewarded Churchill by making him Earl of Marlborough. From this point, he became one of the most powerful figures in the realm, and his stock was only to continue to rise. In 1704, he commanded the victorious British forces at the Battle of Blenheim, thwarting the ambitions of Louis XIV of France and winning him a dukedom from a grateful nation.
Marlborough and Sarah were well matched both in their ambition and in their political alacrity. In tandem to Marlborough’s rise, Sarah had shrewdly befriended James’s daughter by his first, Protestant wife, Anne (1665-1714). Following the arrival of William, who was married to Anne’s sister Mary (1662-1694), she became again one of the major figures of the court – her status having fallen following the birth of James’s son by Mary of Modena. Following her appointments, first, as a lady of the bedchamber and, then, as Anne’s Groom of the Stool, Sarah obtained an emotional (and physical) proximity to Anne that few could rival. Anne came to be dependent on Sarah, turning to her for advice and counsel. Indeed, so strong was their bond that Anne fell profoundly in love with Sarah.
But the relationship was an unequal one. Their characters were incompatible: Sarah, a voracious reader, was fiercely intelligent, whilst Anne had no particular intellectual ambitions. Further, although their affection was certainly mutual, Sarah never loved Anne in the way that she did her. And the result was tempestuous. Following William’s death and Anne’s subsequent coronation as queen on St George’s Day in 1702, Sarah became by far the most powerful of Anne’s advisors; in the words of her biographer, ‘those who wanted to access Anne had to go through Sarah first’. [1] With this influence, she became increasingly self-confident and, convinced of her intellectual superiority, assertive, even domineering. But, she also became complacent and failed to realise that she had come to be replaced in the Queen’s affections by Abigail Hill (c.1670-1734), a cousin of Sarah’s that she herself had introduced to the court.
Following a series of bitter rows about Abigail Hill’s position, Sarah met Anne for the last time in 1710. They would from this point communicate only in writing. Following the election of the Tory party later in 1710, the next year Sarah – a staunch Whig – was stripped of all of her positions at court. When she was forced to leave her rooms in St James’s Palace, the furious Duchess of Marlborough took with her all of their furnishings, including the door locks (she even contemplated taking the chimney-breast). It seems that she was only allowed to keep the money that had been granted her in happier days to build Marlborough House, opposite St James’s, to prevent her from leaking Anne’s love letters.
Following a year spent in Holland – where her husband was already living in exile – the Duke and Duchess of Marlborough returned to Britain in 1714 to find Anne dead. But the, Hanoverian dynasty refused to allow them to enjoy the power they had enjoyed under Anne’s reign, so the couple retired to their residence in Oxfordshire, the vast pile of Blenheim Palace, which had been paid for by the nation in thanks for Marlborough’s victories.
But within a few years, in 1722, Marlborough had died. In the present work – closely related to a prototype at Blenheim by Maria Verelst (1680-1744) – we see Sarah wearing black, the colour of mourning, dating the portrait to around this time. Lady Marlborough clearly wished her mourning to be commemorated, for the present work is closely related to another portrait of her by Zincke, formerly in the Gilbert Collection.[2] Marlborough had deeply loved his wife; after his death, it was found that when his wife had cut off her prized fair hair in a fit of rage, Marlborough had lovingly plaited it and kept it in his closet. Sarah, in turn, spent the years following his death carefully curating and defending his legacy, writing a set of memoirs to make public her account of her and Anne’s falling out.
Born into a Dresden family of goldsmiths, Christian Zincke had been invited to England in either 1704 or 1706 by Charles Boit, the leading enamellist working in Britain of the day. The Marlboroughs were frequent patrons of Zincke; indeed, the earliest dated portrait that he executed in England is a 1711 portrait of the Duchess. [3] Following Boit’s flight from court in 1714 (following the spectacular failure of his project to make a commemorative enamel of the Battle of Blenheim) Zincke gained a virtual monopoly on work in enamel. By 1726, George Vertue could report that he ‘has had more persons of distinction daily sitting to him than any other painter living’.[4] It is no surprise to find the Duchess portrayed in her dramatic mourning garb by the leading enameller of the day, who had also taken her likeness in happier times.
[1] J. Falkner, ‘Churchill [née Jenyns], Sarah, duchess of Marlborough (1660–1744)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edn.], 2008.
[2] Sarah Coffin and Bodo Hofstetter, The Gilbert Collection: Portrait Miniatures in Enamel (London, 2000), p. 117.
[3] Now in the Royal Collection, RCIN 421962
[4] W. Hoare, ‘Zincke, Christian Frederick (1684?–1767)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography [online edn.], 2004.
Provenance
Philips, London, 9th November 1987, lot 13;Hôtel Drouot, Paris, 22nd February 1988, lot 49.