English: "Catalogue Note

The sitter was the only son of Robert Dormer, 1st Earl of Carnarvon and his wife Anna Sophia, eldest daughter of Philip Herbert, 4th Earl of Pembroke. His father was a gallant Royalist who was killed in 1643 at the battle of Newbury, and so he inherited his title at the age of only eleven. In 1653 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Arthur, 1st Baron Capell. Following her death in 1678 he married Lady Mary Bertie, daughter of Montague Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey.

This fine portrait dates from circa 1659 and shows the strong influence of van Dyck. Carnarvon's family had strong credentials as patrons of both van Dyck and Lely. His grandfather, the 4th Earl of Pembroke, was one of van Dyck's greatest patrons in England. His father-in-law, Arthur Lord Capell, later Earl of Essex, was painted by Lely in 1647, and several double portraits of the family date from the 1650s. Carnarvon himself was painted when a boy in c.1647 (Sotheby's sale, 7th June 2006, lot 118) and as part of a large family group. The present portrait relates closely to a three-quarter length portrait of the sitter seated by a pillar (see R. B. Beckett, Lely, 1951, plate 65).

Carnarvon died without surviving male issue and his estate passed to his daughters, Elizabeth, who married Philip Stanhope, 2nd Earl of Chesterfield, and Isabella, who married Charles Coote, 3rd Earl of Mountrath. The present portrait descended through the Chesterfield family and would have hung first at the chief seat of the Stanhope family, Bretby Park in Derbyshire and at the Chesterfield House in London, built in the mid eighteenth century for the 4th Earl of Chesterfield. The elaborate frame was probably added when it was hung at Chesterfield House." [1]