Rediscovering a family portrait

Jane Royds by James Lonsdale, circa 1830

In 1910 the banker Sir Clement Royds published The pedigree of the family of Royds, an extensively researched genealogy of two closely related branches of his family. The Roydses rose from struggling yeoman farmers to great wealth on the back of the wool trade in Rochdale and Halifax during the second half of the 18th century, subsequently moving into banking and land ownership. The book includes a large number of photogravure reproductions of family portraits. My copy came to me as part of my late uncle Kenrick Armitstead's family history archive.

Jane depicted in The pedigree of the family of Royds

Most of the Rochdale branch's portraits followed the line of descent of the landed estate. This was sold shortly after the second world war and in 1988 Jimmy Royds, the heir, sold the Royds portraits, including Lonsdale's magnificent full length one of James Royds, to Roger Royds of Braidwood, New South Wales - a distant cousin. However not all the portraits in Sir Clement's book found their way to Australia. James's daughter-in-law Jane Hudson, who had married his eldest son Clement, had also been painted by Londsale. The picture seemed to have disappeared without trace - until I came across it on e-bay.

The portrait as it appeared on ebay

In 2003 I acquired an oil portrait of the artist Mabel Royds, my Royds great grandmother's first cousin (Jane was my 3xgt grandfather's sister-in-law). That portait was painted in 1911 and too late for Sir Clement's book, but it put me on the look out for others. After trawling fruitlessly through many pages of Google results I came across the above image, which I instantly recognised from the book. Critically the sitter (and artist) had been identified from the label on the frame.

and the crucial label on the frame

The picture had been offered by an American seller a number of times with successively lower retentions until it had sold to a buyer in New York for about $1,500. It seemed clear that the buyer was not a dealer, but I got in touch with him anyway to give him some information about the sitter and ask for a photograph for my collection.

before cleaning

Over the next few weeks as we exchanged correspondance it became clear that he had been taking the picture round the main New York sale rooms and had been disappoitned by the estimates he was given. Eventually I made my move and offered to buy the picture at a price which gave him a comfortable profit. He accepted and the picture was shipped back home.

Detail

The New York e-bayer had been scrupulously honest about the state of the picture. It was in poor shape, as was the frame. There was some loss of paint and the whole canvas had been coated with polyurethane varnish while the gilded frame - probably original - had been covered in cheap gold paint. My restorer Ros Whitehouse, http://www.rosalind-whitehouse.com/, believes the picture must have been kept in a damp place for some years. She lined the canvas then painstakingly removed the polyurethane with a scalpel before taking off the grimy varnish beneath. The frame was an even bigger task, but much of the original gilding was eventually uncovered and retained.

As a family document the picture is invaluable and this is how I had been regarding it. But what about its quality as a work of art? Lonsdale was a famous painter in his lifetime. He had been a pupil of Romney and had a prolific output, depicting most of the leading figures of the day, although today he is little known. Only two of his portraits are on permanent display in at the National portrait gallery. One is of Caroline of Brunswick, wife of Geroge IV, which bears some resemblance to Jane Royds's portrait:

http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/largerimage.php?LinkID=mp02794&page=1&role=art&rNo=5

Judging from some of his other work I suspect he was happier painting men than women. Jane's bust seems anatomically implausible and Queen Caroline's portrait has an awkwardness about it. One of the NPL's curators went as far as telling me it was one of her least favourite pictures in the gallery. Even after the inevitable flattery, Jane was clearly no oil painting herself. My wife disliked the picture, and from an aesthetic point of view I can sympathise. I ended up giving it to my mother.

There is another portrait of Jane Royds. Probably painted ten years later, and on a grander scale, it used to hang with that of her husband in the family bank in Rochdale. This eventually became part of RBS and was in the vaults of their archive the last time I enquired after it.