This mezzotint was made by Robert Williams, after an oil painting by the hugely successful court painter, Sir Peter Lely. The print was sold by Richard Tompson (also sometimes spelt ‘Thompson’), a dealer, auctioneer and printseller who sold engravings and mezzotints from ‘The Sun’ in Bedford Street, Covent Garden. Very little is known of the Welsh mezzotinter, Robert Williams, who has signed this plate ‘I Williams fecit’, but it is likely he made it between 1678-79.

The print depicts a double portrait of Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and Duchess of Lauderdale (1626-1698), and her husband, John Maitland, 1st Duke of Lauderdale (1616-1682). Husband and wife are depicted three-quarter length and seated, the Duchess on the left and the Duke on the right. The Duchess is wearing a low-cut white under-smock with full sleeves gathered at the elbow. Over the smock she wears a very low cut brown 'nightgown'. Over her lap lies a drape and in her right hand she holds a gauze scarf. The Duke is wearing a full-bottomed wig, a lace cravat, and a partially opened buttoned black coat with short sleeves. The Garter star – indicating his role as Knight of the Garter – is embroidered on his coat. In the background of the portrait is an Italianate house, a landscape with trees, and a distant town. The original oil painting, which is one of Lely’s masterpieces, can be found in The Dysart Collection at Ham House, National Trust (NT1139789).

Elizabeth Murray, Countess of Dysart and later Duchess of Lauderdale, inherited Ham House from her father in 1655, when she succeeded him to the Earldom of Dysart. A charming, tenacious and politically minded figure, in 1672 she married as her second husband John Maitland, who in the same year was granted the dukedom and created Knight of the Garter. Maitland became Secretary of State for Scotland from 1660 to 1680, wielding great political power.

The Lauderdales were well aware that their image was central to their projection of power. They spent the 1670s redecorating and remodelling Ham House, commissioning artists from across Europe and transforming their Thames-side home into one of the grandest Stuart houses in England. Before her marriage, the Duchess of Lauderdale had been a significant patron of Peter Lely, and she continued to patronise him throughout his career. She likely commissioned the double portrait (from which this mezzotint is taken) around the time of her marriage to the Duke in 1672. By this point Lely had established himself as principal painter to the English court, and dominated court portraiture until his death in 1680.

The Duchess of Lauderdale also commissioned new work from the Van de Veldes, a father and son marine artist duo who had arrived in England from the Netherlands in 1673. As such, she is one of the Van de Velde’s first recorded patrons in England. Willem Van de Velde the Younger produced four seascapes (signed and dated 1673) for Ham House, which were set into four over-doors in what came to be known as ‘Her Graces bedchamber’. Van de Velde the Younger was one of the most sought after marine artists in 17th century Europe and is now considered, alongside his father, Willem Van de Velde the Elder, as one of the founders of English marine painting. The National Maritime Museum holds the largest collection of the Van de Veldes’ artwork in the world and is a longstanding centre of Van de Velde expertise.

This mezzotint was probably made and published around 1678-79, in the same decade that Lely’s oil portrait was produced. Sir Peter Lely was central to the development of this distinctive tonal printmaking technique, which became extremely popular in Europe by the end of the 1660s. Lely seems to have encouraged various printmakers to translate his paintings into mezzotints, using the reproductive medium to advertise his name and his skill as a portraitist. Given the Lauderdale’s influence and status, mezzotints made after Lely’s double portrait would have found an appreciative audience on the London print market.

Richard Tompson, the publisher of this print, also played a pivotal role in the development of the technique. He was one of the first publishers to create large series of high-quality mezzotints, often employing Dutch printmakers who had arrived in London in large numbers in the 1670s. Mezzotints, especially mezzotint portraits, became so popular in Britain that they became known in the eighteenth-century as ‘la manière anglaise’. The size of this print (approximately 40 x 30cm, and known in the period as ‘posture size’) means that it would have fit into a standard sized fame. Collectors may have displayed it on the wall, or assembled it into an album of mezzotints depicting high status individuals.

This impression was in the collection of Hon. Christopher Lennox-Boyd (1914-2012), a prolific and important print collector, particularly of British mezzotints.