Attached to the will of 8 March 1887 was an inventory of the same date including a list of the 45 paintings then intended for the National Gallery. That list is set out in the appendix to this entry. The inventory may originally have been in manuscript which might explain why some artists’ names have been wrongly spelt in the typed version which formed part of the will as admitted to probate: for example, Vandes Meulen, Wonvermans, Bettini (author’s italics). Both it and the inventory of furniture and porcelain were expressed to be translated from the French, which at least raises the possibility that the French original was written, or dictated, by Yolande herself. This possibility is made greater by some of the language used to describe individual items which goes beyond what was necessary merely to identify them: for example, ‘Very beautiful portrait’ (a Velázquez), ‘A superb painting full of beautiful inspiration and fine proportion from top to bottom’ (a Murillo) and ‘A charming picture very fine in all respects’ (a Wouwermans).
Of the 45 paintings in the inventory, 20 hung at Lynford Hall and the remainder at Grove House, Roehampton. Since some of the same inventory numbers appear twice – once for a picture at Lynford Hall and once for a picture at Grove House – it is clear that separate numbering was established for each house. This applies also to the inventoried porcelain and furniture. The most likely explanation for the sequence of numbering is not that it reflects the chronological order of a piece’s acquisition,25 but rather the topography of the collection in the house in question. It should also be borne in mind that the function of the 1887 inventories was not primarily to list all the objects in the Lyne Stephens collection,26 but to identify the paintings which Yolande then intended to leave to the National Gallery, and the furniture and porcelain which she then planned to give to the South Kensington Museum. In the case of both properties, there are many numbers missing in the inventories, and these presumably represent items (not necessarily paintings, furniture or porcelain) that Yolande did not plan to give to either institution.
Unfortunately the inventory did not specify the rooms in which individual paintings hung. However, its order suggests certain groupings. At Lynford Hall, for example, it seems likely that a large Boar Hunt by Fyt27 (no. 40 of the 1887 inventory) and a large Hondecoeter painting of birds (no. 41) hung in the same room near to each other. No. 98 of the Lynford Hall section of the inventory was a portrait by Velázquez of Philip IV dressed in red, embroidered in silver, holding a ‘flag’. The painting was no. 320 of the 1895 Lyne Stephens sale, in the catalogue of which its dimensions are given as 54 x 39 in. (and the object held by the king correctly identified as a baton).28 No. 99 at Lynford was another Velázquez, a portrait of an Infanta. The 1895 sale catalogue gives its dimensions as 58 x 39½ in. Since the paintings were of similar sizes and had been in different Paris sales – the duc de Morny sale on 31 May 1865 in the case of the Infanta and the marquis de Salamanca sale on 3–6 June 1867 in the case of the Philip IV – one may suppose that Mrs Lyne Stephens targeted the Philip IV as a suitable pair to the Infanta and hung the paintings accordingly. Insofar as it is possible to judge from a photograph taken in 1895, both the portrait of Philip IV and that of an Infanta hung in the library at Lynford Hall, and the Murillo Triumph of the Eucharist (no. 108 of the inventory), certainly did, so making of the library a showcase for the Spanish School.29 That this was probably the case when the inventory had been made eight years earlier is suggested by the proximity of the respective pictures’ numbering.
It seems likely from the inventory numbering that in 1887 the pictures at Lynford Hall attributed to the French painters Rigaud (no. 278), Philippe de Champaigne (no. 279) and Largillierre (no. 281), hung near to each other, and to a picture (no. 280) attributed to Pourbus, a Fleming who was naturalised French.30 No. 278 can be identified as a version of a Rigaud portrait of Louis XIV, the dimensions of which were given in the 1895 sale catalogue as 61 x 39 in. No. 279 was the full-length portrait of Cardinal de Richelieu by Philippe de Champaigne now in the National Gallery.31 No. 280, the portrait of Christine de Savoie by Pourbus, is described in the 1895 sale catalogue (lot 341) as ‘whole length’, and in the 1887 inventory as showing the sitter in state robes. The sale catalogue does not give the picture’s dimensions, but it seems reasonable to assume that its size was not dissimilar to that of the portrait of Richelieu. Finally, no. 281 of the 1887 inventory, a Largillierre portrait of an unknown woman wearing white silk and looking at her reflection in the mirror must be lot 362 of the 1895 sale. There its dimensions were stated to be 63 x 50 in. Thus, one may suppose that in 1887 the hang of one wall at Lynford Hall consisted of a group of two large full-length portraits (one male, one female) flanked by two three-quarter-length portraits (one male, one female), and all of them of the French School. If that is correct, then Yolande Lyne Stephens emerges as a collector who carefully hung, and possibly deliberately acquired, her paintings at Lynford to achieve an aesthetic, thematic and art-historical balance.32 Such a judgement is, however, subject to two qualifications. Firstly, it may have been Edward Claremont who guided both her acquisitions and their hang. Her own letters do not mention her collection.33 Secondly, to judge from a photograph of the principal staircase at Lynford Hall forming part of the estate agent’s details made soon after Yolande’s death, and showing the Largillierre, that picture could not then have hung as one of a group of four in line, nor would the larger paintings in the supposed group easily have fitted into the arched wall spaces of the staircase gallery.34 It may have been the case that, when the inventory was made in 1887, the paintings had indeed been hung to achieve aesthetic, thematic and art-historical balance, and that Yolande changed this hang sometime after Edward Claremont’s death three years later. In any event it is less easy to match the furniture and porcelain with the pictures except perhaps in the case of those four paintings. The item immediately preceding them numerically (no. 277) is described as ‘Three vases with lids Old Worcester china soft porcelain Blue ground full of effect Medallions birds framed in gold. They are of sexangular [sic] and upright shape.’ It seems possible that in 1887 one of these striking vases was placed on a stand in each of the three spaces between the four pictures. Again, if this was ever so, the placing of the vases had changed by 1895, since apart from anything else the vase shown beneath the Largillierre in the photograph is evidently not ‘sexangular’ and it lacks its lid.
25 For example, no. 98 (Velázquez’s Philip IV) had been in the Salamanca sale in Paris on 3–6 June 1867 and so acquired by Mrs Lyne Stephens then or soon thereafter, but, Murillo’s Triumph of the Eucharist, had been in the Pourtalès sale two years earlier.
26 For example, two paintings once in the Lyne Stephens collection, but not in the inventory, nor in the 1895 or 1911 sales, were offered at auction at Christie’s, London, 16 December 1998, lots 164 (Benedetto Caliari, Allegory of the Theological Virtues) and 165 (Giovanni Battista Salvi, Il Sassoferrato, The Madonna at Prayer).
27 A reference in this discussion to a painting being ‘by’ any particular artist does not mean that that attribution is here accepted. It is no more than repeating the attribution(s) given in the inventory and/or the catalogue of the 1895 sale.
28 The Lyne Stephens Philip IV was called at the time ‘a brilliant repetition of the portrait of Philip IV in the Dulwich Gallery’ (The Times, 8 May 1895, p. 8), hence a copy of the painting by Velázquez now in the Frick Collection, New York (inv. no. 11.1.123).
29 A photograph taken of the library in 1895 by H.P. Robinson, Redhill, probably shows the portrait of an Infanta on the right-hand side of a fireplace at the far end of the room, in which case the similarly sized painting on the left-hand side is probably the portrait of Philip IV. That the Murillo hung in the library can be seen by comparison with a photograph of it facing p. 40 of Christie’s sale catalogue of the 1895 sale. This picture, now in the collection at Buscot Park (National Trust) is one of the four lunettes by Murillo painted for the church of Santa María la Blanca, Seville, in about 1665. It was bought by Yolande Lyne Stephens in the Pourtalès sale, Paris, 27 March 1865. It was acquired at the Lyne Stephens sale, London, 11 May 1895, by Agnew’s, who sold it in 1908 to Sir Alexander Henderson, later 1st Lord Faringdon (see Finaldi 2012, no. 6).
30 The reference is presumably to Pourbus the Younger, assuming that the Christine de Savoie referred to is the daughter of Henri IV of France.
31 For this painting (NG 1449) see Wine 2001, pp. 24–31.
32 Of the four paintings only that by Philippe de Champaigne had a provenance that was recorded (the 1869 Espagnac sale), so it is likely that the other three paintings came from a different source or sources. For another example of collecting in the later nineteenth century to create a particular hang, see Postle 1994, p. 23.
33 As kindly advised by Jenifer Roberts (email of 17 March 2009).
34 I am grateful to Jenifer Roberts for sending me photocopies of this photograph and others of the interior.