Family Group

Lady Sarah Spencer, sixth daughter of John, 7th duke of Marlborough, by 1891.[1] Mrs. Boyle; (sale, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 7 July 1894, no. 98, as by Zoffany);[2] (P. & D. Colnaghi, London). Lady Grace Alexander Lister;[3] (sale, Sotheby's, London, 24 February 1960, no. 122, as by Zoffany); purchased by (P. & D. Colnaghi, London) for Paul Mellon, Upperville, Virginia; gift 1983 to NGA. [1] Per _Works by the Old Masters, and by Deceased Masters of the British School. Winter Exhibition_, Royal Academy of Arts, London, 1891, no. 17, as by Zoffany. [2] The Getty Provenance Index, in a letter of 9 June 1988 (in NGA curatorial files), provides the name of the consignor at the 1894 sale, taken from Christie's records. [2] The Getty Provenance Index, citing Colnaghi records, lists an additional owner, William Cleverly Alexander [d. 1916] of London and Heathfield, Sussex, as purchaser from Colnaghi's in 1894, followed by Lady Grace Alexander Lister of London and High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, "daughter of W.C. Alexander," who acquired the painting "presumably [as a] gift or by inheritance" from her father. She married Col. Sir William Tindall Lister in 1894. John Hayes' suggestion that she was perhaps the widow of Sir Frederick Spencer Lister, published in the 1992 NGA systematic catalogue of the British paintings, was in error.