STUDIO OF ALLAN RAMSAY (SCOTTISH 1713 - 1784)
PORTRAIT OF JEAN ABERCROMBY (MRS MORRISON OF HADDO)

oil on canvas
framed

image size 76cm x 63cm, overall size 99cm x 86cm

Note 1: The sitter was the daughter of General James Abercromby and the sister of Anne Abercromby. In 1767 she married Captain James Morison of Haddo. He died in 1777 and she married secondly Admiral Robert Duff of Loggie. The composition of the present work recurs in three other portraits of circa 1758-60, Mrs Margaret Ramsay, Mary, Countess of Sutherland, and a portrait of an unidentified lady.
Note 2: This portrait is believed to be the one catalogued in Smart’s catalogue of Ramsay’s work as; 379a “whereabouts unknown”. According to Smart 379, Illustrated on page 19 of the catalogue there are two versions of the painting of Jean Abercromby (379 and 379a). The autograph version is held by York Art Gallery having purchased the painting from Sotheby’s in 2002 for £420,000 (Hammer). The second version, or presumably studio work, was owned by Princess Louise, Dutchess of Argyll, and Daughter of Queen Victoria. It was sold in her sale in 1924 by Christies, as by Zoffany. This appears to be where the provenance of the work was lost until the painting presumably re-appears at Christies in 2004 as the Property of Prince Galitzine. Prince Vladimir Emanuelovich Galitzine (17 June 1884 – 15 July 1954) was a Russian émigré who lived in England. He was the Chairman of the Russian Society of Support to Russian Emigrants in England.
Provenance: Sotheby's London, March 26, 2004, lot 20 as after Allan Ramsay, Property of Prince Galitzine (Died December 2002), Doyle New York, Lot 54, 10^th November 2021, as after Allan Ramsay, Possibly, by family descent to the 1^st Duke of Fife (1912); his widow, Louise, The Princess Royal; her sale Christies, 18^th July 1924 (Lot 138, as Zoffany)