The market for eighteenth-century British pastels is exceptionally strong currently; both institutions and private buyers see the advantage of owning great examples by leading artists and confidence to buy in this area has been greatly enhanced by the work of a number of scholars, particularly Neil Jeffares. Over the past few years we have handled exceptional examples by Francis Cotes, William Hoare of Bath, Daniel Gardiner and Archibald Skirving. This year we are offering an intriguing group of works which tell a fascinating, if incomplete, story.

The main pastel is an attractive portrait attributed to Arthur Pond (1705-1758) of an amateur female pastellist at work. Exquisitely finished it demonstrates Pond at the height of his powers and probably depicts one of the patrician amateur artists he taught in the 1730s. Whilst the sitter is currently unidentified a number of circumstantial clues point towards Lady Helena Perceval (1714–1746), the daughter of the Anglo-Irish statesman and intellectual John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont, who was a talented draughtswoman and is recorded sitting to Pond in 1737.  Whilst this identification may not be entirely secure, the present compelling portrait stands as a representation of a highly significant moment of female, amateur creativity in a circle of aristocratic friends with court connections either to George II and Queen Caroline or Frederick and Augusta, Prince and Princess of Wales.

The first significant female pupil we know Pond had was Grace Carteret, Countess of Dysart. Her cousin, Mary Pendarves, more famously known by her second married name, Delany, and celebrated as one of the most significant amateur artists of the eighteenth century for her  paper collages of botanical specimens, gave an account of her training under Pond.  Writing to her sister in June 1734 Mary Pendarves noted:

'Lady Dysart goes on extremely well with her drawing; she has got to crayons, and I design to fall into that way. I hope Mr Pond will help me too, for his colouring in crayons I think the best I have seen of an English painter – it tries my eyes less than [needle]work, and entertains me better; I aim at everything, and will send you a sample of what I am about, but I don’t design to colour till I am more perfect in my drawing.' 

Dysart’s surviving pastels show that she was a proficient copyist.  Mary Pendarves does seem to have received ‘help’ from Pond as well, although there are no specific payments for lessons in his surviving account book, a number of entries suggest that she was receiving both tuition and supplies from him. Pond supplied her with pastels, noting in 1735 the receipt of 1 guinea from ‘Mrs Pendarvis for french Crayons’.  At the same time Pond was producing portraits of her friends and relations; Mary Pendarvis’s close friend and life-long correspondent Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland commissioned a portrait of Catherine Dashwood. This in-turn led to a number of fashionable commissions from figures associated with the court, including portraits of Henrietta, Countess of Pomfret and Frances, Countess of Hertford, both ladies of the bedchamber, and Anne Vane, maid of honour to Queen Caroline.  Pond also drew portraits of Princess Mary and Princess Louisa, daughters of George II and a number of members of Frederick, Prince of Wale’s household. 

In the midst of this fashionable circle was Lady Helena Percival, daughter of John Perceval, 1st Earl of Egmont. She was a noted amateur artist who had trained initially with Bernard Lens III.  A landscape drawing dated 1737 in the British Museum shows her early debt to Lens and his topographical work but also her skill as an artist.  In March 1736 Egmont recorded in his diary visiting Pond’s studio in Great Queen Street: ‘This morning I went to Mr. Pond, the painter in Queen Street, to see my daughter Helena sit to him for her picture in crayons. I met my daughter-in-law Percival there, who promised she would sit for me also.’  In August Perceval praised the portrait as ‘a fine piece and like’: could this be referring to this pastel? The present portrait certainly appears close physically to Lady Helena, who was painted by James Wills in the mid-1740s shortly after her marriage to Sir John Rawdon. In the engraving of Wills’s portrait, Helena Rawdon shares the same almond shaped eyes, elongated nose and similarly dressed hair as the woman in the present portrait, although it is dangerous to make too much of this similarity given the generalising fashion of portraiture of the period. 

The portrait is accompanied by two copies after two of Rosalba Carriera’s Four Seasons – Winter and Summer – these pastels seem likely to have been the work of the sitter in the portrait. The three pastels are all framed in identical, japanned, black and gilt frames, which are similar to frames used by the Irish ornithological painter Samuel Dixon. Two of the copies have hanging instructions in an eighteenth-century hand on the reverse, suggesting the four pastels formed part of a decorative scheme at some point. Two of the copies add weight to the theory that they are the product of one of Pond’s amateur pastellists as Pond was famous for his reproductions of Carriera’s Seasons.

Pond’s portrait is a compelling image of an amateur pastellist at work, drawn at a moment when the medium was being practiced by a group of fashionable and well-connected aristocratic women. Whilst firm identification of the sitter remains allusive, the references to Pond’s portrait of Lady Helena Perceval, her ability as an artist and the striking physical likeness offers one possibility. Lady Helena Perceval was at the heart of a group of women who were keen amateur pastellists who took lessons from Pond and practiced at the highest level, drawing each other and exchanging portraits and copies of old masters as signs of their friendship and accomplishment. This remarkable image and its associated works offer a remarkable insight into the world of eighteenth-century female amateur art.