Portrait of Mary, Lady Barrington Bourchier
After a stay in Paris, Wissing came to England in 1676. He enjoyed Royal Patronage as was appointed Principal Painter to James II. This is a portrait of Mary Compton before her marriage to Lord Barrington Bourchier of Beningborough, near York. The inscription on the lower right of the painting is thought to have been added later. The sitter is dressed in loosely fitting clothes which she certainly might have worn in the privacy of her home but certainly not in the formal circles of fashionable society. It is uncertain whether this portrait is by Wissing. Often, portraits of this time were a combination of the work of several artists, the portraitist rendering only the head from life, the rest being finished later in the studios of artists specialising in drapery, landscape and animal painting.
