Portrait of a lady with her pet whippet

Watercolour on ivory

11.4 x 9 cm

Please note this work is sold subject to ivory exemption registration (presently in progress)

£1,200

This adept portrait miniature depicts an attractive young woman with her pet whippet in the foreground. The painter was likely familiar with the works of Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830), as the composition bears some similarities to his portrait of Lady Maria Conyngham (c. 1824-1825). 

Benjamin De La Cour was born in 1795 to a family of French extraction. The date suggests that they had likely fled during the French revolution. He entered the RA Schools in 1818 and exhibited twice at the Royal Academy in the same year, giving an address at “Messrs. Colnaghi's and Co. Cockspur Street.” 

 Though his exhibited pictures generally depict the lesser aristocracy, he was also responsible for some more interesting works. In 1824 he exhibited a large portrait of Teresa del Riego (1800-1824), widow of General Riego, who fled to Gibraltar during the invasion of the One Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis in 1823. She lived in London for the last year of her life, dying on 19th June 1824.  The painting is now in the collection of the Museum of Romanticism in Madrid. 

 In 1841 Delacour exhibited a similarly exotic portrait “of an oriental traveller, in the costume of Little Tibet, with the rock of Iskardoh (Skardu), and the valley of the Indus in the background.”

According to family information given to the V&A Museum, Delacour died in 1843 of “lockjaw” (tetanus) after “driving a rusty nail into his hand.”