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Portrait of Mrs. Leneve
Also known as: Mrs. Leneve; Sarah, Wife of John Earle, of Heydon Hall, Norfolk; Portrait of a Lady of the Earle Family
About the Artwork
This woman’s heavily lidded eyes, fleshy chin, and slender fingers conform to 17th-century ideals of beauty, but when the museum acquired this painting in 1942, her features had been extensively overpainted to bring her more in line with modern standards of beauty. This later intervention included lowering the sitter’s eyebrows, reducing her prominent eyes and lips, and adding curls to make her forehead appear smaller. Mrs. Leneve now appears as the fashionable artist Peter Lely originally intended.
Exhibition history
Style, Truth and the Portrait. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (October 1-November 19, 1963). Dutch Art and Life in the Seventeenth Century. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (July 10-September 2, 1973). Collecting Drawings in England. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (November 3, 1987-January 17, 1988). Horace Walpole's Strawberry Hill. Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT (organizer) (October 15, 2009-January 2, 2010); Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (March 6-July 4, 2010). British Gallery Reinstallation (June 2020). The Cleveland Museum of Art (organizer).
Quick Overview
- Artist
- Peter Lely (British, 1618–1680)
- Date
- c. 1657
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- Framed: 157.5 x 132.5 x 13 cm (62 x 52 3/16 x 5 1/8 in.); Unframed: 126.7 x 101.3 cm (49 7/8 x 39 7/8 in.)
- Type
- Painting
- Classification
- Painting
- Department
- European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Mrs. Otto Miller
- Accession no.
- 1942.247
Provenance
family of the sitter, by descent to Isabella Leneve Isabelle Leneve, by descent to her nephew, Peter Leneve ?-1759: Mr. and Mrs. Peter Leneve, Norwich, sold to Horace Walpole 1759-1797: Horace Walpole [1717-1797] Strawberry Hill, Middlesex, England, to Earl of Waldegrave 1797-1842: The Earls Waldegrave, consigned to Strawberry Hill sale, April 25, 1842, no. 61) 1842: (Robins sale, Strawberry Hill, May 18, 1842, sold to Dommes) 1842-?: Dommes ?-1894: Sir Hugh Hume Campbell, Bart., sold at Christie’s, London 1894: (Christie’s, London, June 16, 1894, no. 26, to Prideaux) 1894-1909?: Prideaux 1909-1915: R. C. Vose and N. M. Vose, Boston, sold to Mrs. Otto Miller 1915-1942: Mrs. Otto Miller, Cleveland, by gift to the Cleveland Museum of Art 1942-: The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
More by Sir Peter Lely in museum collections
Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.
Open-access museum record · AT-00009251
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