Three Stories About the Painting Ann Franks Day (Lady Ann Fenoulhet)
Ann Franks Day (Lady Ann Fenoulhet) is one of seven paintings the Carnegie Museum of Art acquired that were once part of the important [Northbrook Collection](/about/collection-history). The following stories trace part of this painting’s journey from artist’s studio to the walls of CMOA.
A Moment in History: London, 1760
- Current Owner
- Richard Edgcumbe
- Current Location
- London, England
- Miles Traveled
- 0 miles
- Number of Owners
- One
This portrait of Anne Day, later Lady Fenoulhet, is an early work by Sir Joshua Reynolds, the future first president of London’s Royal Academy of Arts and the most influential 18th century English painter. The young woman is fashionably dressed, liberally adorned with lace, her hands inside a colorful muff, wearing a stylish Woffington hat (named after the famous actress Peg Woffington.)
Anne Day was the mistress of Richard Edgcumbe, 2nd Baron Edgcumbe and, at the time of this portrait, was pregnant with their last child. Edgcumbe likely commissioned the painting. Following his death soon after this portrait was painted, Anne Day became Lady Fenoulhet when she married Sir Peter Fenoulhet in 1762. Shortly afterwards, following their scandalous separation, she moved to France. After the start of the French Revolution, she returned to England, where she died in 1790, in her early sixties.
A Moment in History: London, 1853
- Current Owner
- Thomas Baring, M.P.
- Current Location
- London, England
- Miles Traveled
- 232 miles
- Number of Owners
- Five
It is unclear when this portrait entered the Baring family collection, but it was in the procession of Sir Francis Baring by 1845. His son Thomas Baring, M. P. owned the painting by 1851 and displayed it in his London residence at Grosvenor Square. Research by CMOA discovered that the portrait had been damaged by fire, and likely the result of a widely-publicized fire at this London residence in October 1853. The “restored” painting subsequently belonged to Mr. Baring’s nephew the 1st Earl of Northbrook, who, among other bequests, also inherited his bachelor uncle’s art collection. For the next several decades, because of its damaged state, the portrait led a quiet, private life with little or no public exposure. Indeed, the noted English art historian Ellis Waterhouse, who saw the painting in the 1930s, described it as being in a “horrid state.”
A Moment in History: London, 1937
- Current Owner
- Florence Anita, Countess of Northbrook
- Current Location
- London, England
- Miles Traveled
- 232 miles
- Number of Owners
- Seven
Long after it was damaged by fire, this portrait of Miss Day reappeared in public at a Christie’s sale in London in June 1937, as the property of Florence Anita, Countess of Northbrook. She was the widow of the 2nd Earl of Northbrook, who had died in 1929. The portrait did not sell, so it reappeared in February of the following year at the same venue, when it did sell for the low price of £115.5, undoubtedly because of its poor condition. That same year, it appeared in the New York art market. By 1946, it belonged to the Pittsburgh art collector Charles J. Rosenbloom, who, upon his death in 1973, bequeathed it to the museum, along with a large part of his great print collection.
This is the portrait’s first display in Pittsburgh since 1946 and it marks the completion of a major restoration to recover Reynold’s original effect.
Digital Wall Labels
Select another painting for more details and to see the animated timeline:
- Painting Pieter Cornelisz. van der Morsch, by Frans Hals
- Vision of Saint Ildephonsus, by Andrien Ysenbrandt
- Hero, Ursula, and Beatrice in Leonato’s Garden, by Reverend Matthew William Peters
- Shepherd Boy with Recorder, by Unknown Northern Italian
- Landscape with a Natural Arch, by Gaspard Dughet
- Portrait of a Young Man, by Deminico Puligo
- Ann Franks Day (Lady Ann Fenoulhet), by Sir Joshua Reynolds
