White Poodle in a Punt

Possibly Sir Jarrit Smith or Smyth [1692-1783], Ashton Court, near Bristol, Somerset;[1] by descent in the family to his great-great-great-granddaughter, Esmé Smyth [née Edwards, 1863-1946], Ashton Court.[2] Lord de Mauley, Langford House, Lechdale, Gloucestershire; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 8 July 1949, no. 131); (Frank Sabin, London); purchased 1951 by the 21st Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford [1914-1980], Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire;[3] (sale, Sotheby & Co., London, 23 March 1960, no. 63); purchased by (Colnaghi, London) for Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; bequest 1999 to NGA. [1] See Judy Egerton, _George Stubbs, Painter. Catalogue Raisonné_, New Haven and London, 2007: no. 259, 486 n. 1. [2] Esmé Edwards married the Hon. Gilbert Irby, but later took the name of Smyth when she inherited Ashton Court after her mother's death in 1914. Her mother, Emily Frances Way (1835-1914), was married twice, first to George Oldham Edwards, who died in 1883, then in 1884 to her cousin, Greville Upton (who became Greville Smyth by Royal License in 1859 in order to inherit the Smyth estates, and who died in 1901). See Anton Bantock, _The Inside Story of the Smyths of Ashton Court_, Bristol, 1980. The painting was not included in her estate sale, conducted at Ashton Court by John E. Pritchard & Co., 3-6 and 10-13 July 1947; see Egerton 2007, 486. [3] The full name of the 21st Earl was John George Charles Henry Alton Alexander Chetwynd Chetwynd-Talbot. The painting is listed in a January 1953 catalogue of his pictures, where the entry includes the information about the Earl's purchase from Sabin: Anthony Crofton, "A Catalogue of the Pictures at Ingestre Hall, Staffordshire, Belonging to The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Shrewsbury and Waterford," in _Collections for a History of Staffordshire Edited by The Staffordshire Record Society..._, London, 1954: 73, no. 46.