Portrait of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire

A duchess in a vast black hat, a style so linked to her that it was called the Gainsborough hat. Her portrait was lost, cut down to fit over a fireplace, stolen by the Napoleon of Crime, and finally brought home after more than 200 years.

The story behind the painting

Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire, was a famous political hostess, painted several times by both Thomas Gainsborough and Joshua Reynolds. This oil portrait by Gainsborough dates from around 1785 to 1787. Wikidata simply gives the 1780s. It shows her in a large black hat, a style she made fashionable and which came to be known as the Gainsborough hat, or portrait hat. The picture, about 127 by 101.5 cm, was meant for Chatsworth House, the Devonshire family seat, but it did not stay there.

What to look for

The hat is the first thing that catches the eye: large, black and dramatic, a fashion statement that the sitter herself launched. Look also at the edges of the canvas. In the 1830s the lost painting turned up in the home of an elderly schoolmistress, who had cut it down somewhat so that it would fit over her fireplace. The picture we see today is therefore not quite the size Gainsborough painted, a quiet trace of its strange life in an ordinary home.

Meaning and intent

This portrait is famous above all for its history. In 1876 it was bought at Christie's by the dealer William Agnew, at the time the highest price ever paid for a painting at auction. Three weeks later it was stolen from the Agnew gallery in London, and for years newspapers printed claimed sightings. Only 25 years later did it emerge that the thief was Adam Worth, the Napoleon of Crime, who had meant to use it to bail out his brother, then kept it for a rainy day and took it to the United States.

Legacy

In early 1901, through the Pinkerton detective agency, Worth negotiated the return of the painting to Agnew's son, and the exchange took place in Chicago in March. A few months later it reached London, and the financier J. P. Morgan travelled to England to acquire it. It stayed in the Morgan family until 1994, when the 11th Duke of Devonshire bought it at Sotheby's for Chatsworth House. After more than 200 years, the duchess in the black hat was home again.