Lady of Leinster House in New York sale

IF FRANCIS Bacon’s twisted view of the female form leaves you cold (see above), two very different – and rather more affordable – paintings of women will be auctioned next week. Both paintings have an Irish connection.

The New Governess by artist Edmund Blair Leighton was first exhibited at the Royal Dublin Society in 1894. The oil-on-canvas, being sold by a private UK collector, depicts one of the quintessential figures of Victorian society and goes under the hammer at Bonhams in London on Wednesday with an estimate of just £8,000-£12,000 (€9,600- €14,400).

The following day, a portrait of the former mistress of Leinster House will go under the hammer in New York where Christie’s will offer a bust-length Portrait of Emilia Olivia St. George, the Duchess of Leinster by Hugh Douglas-Hamilton in its Old Master Paintings sale with an estimate of $8,000-$12,000 (€6,200- €9,300).

The duchess was born in 1755 to an aristocratic Roscommon father, George Usher (Lord St George), and a Dublin-born mother, Elisabeth Dominick. At the age of 20, she married William Robert FitzGerald, second duke of Leinster. He was MP for Kildare in the House of Commons and a supporter of Catholic emancipation.

The couple had nine children and lived in lavish houses – Carton House in Co Kildare and Leinster House (now the Dáil and Seanad) on Kildare Street in Dublin. She died, aged 43, in London in 1798.

Hugh Douglas-Hamilton was one of the most important Irish artists of the Georgian era and was famous for his society portraits. Born in 1740 at Crow Street, Dublin, the son of a wig-maker, he spent much of his working life in London but returned to Dublin where he died in 1808.

Four years ago he was the subject of an exhibition featuring 60 of his paintings at the National Gallery of Ireland to mark the bi-centenary of his death.

– MP