These pastel portraits depicting Georgiana and Henrietta Cavendish, the two legitimate daughters of Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire, are soon to hang side by side for the first time in over a century.
The pair were painted in 1790 by the artist John Russell (1745- 1806), a foremost pastellist of his day, and have been acquired by the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm for its collection of British art. The pastels were last exhibited together in Paris in 1908 and hung alongside each other at the Royal Academy in 1790.
Countess Spencer, the Duchess of Devonshire’s mother, commissioned the portraits. In a surviving letter between the pair, she wrote: “The Duke is not yet gone my Dearest Georgiana which has given me time to have a little Craion [sic] picture of Georgiana finished by Russal [sic] – it is drawn in the cap she wore while she had her cold & which I thought became her much.”