Provenance:

By original decent of the sitter’s family at Uffington, Lincolnshire

Ayton Castle, Berwickshire

The sitter has an intelligent and strong face, dressed in bright satin and lavish neckwear such is the lavish costume depicting his personality, and social standing.

In portraiture, rich textiles have long been associated with luxury and elegance, often used to convey status and the wealth and importance of the sitter, and it was a popular accessory in the fashion of the elite during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Captain Richard Bertie (ca. 1635 – 19 January 1686) was an English soldier and Member of Parliament.

The third son of Montagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey. He served under the then Duke of York in French military service, fighting at the siege of Mouzon in 1653 and at Landrecies in 1655. After the English Restoration, he served as a captain of horse in England and Ireland and was called up against the Monmouth Rebellion. However, both he and his younger half-brother Captain Henry Bertie lost their commissions in November 1685 for failing to support James II’s program of installing Roman Catholic army officers. He was returned as Member of Parliament for Woodstock in 1685, but died early in 1686, without having married.

John Hayls worked intensively for the Bertie family painting their portraits over the years including Bridget Osborne (née Bertie) (1629-1703/4), Duchess of Leeds; Bridget’s brother the Hon. Charles Bertie in the early 1660’s (ex-Uffington House, Lincolnshire, sold at Sotheby’s in 2009), her half sister Mary Bertie and half-brother Henry Bertie.

His most famous portrait is of Samuel Pepys (1666, National Portrait Gallery, London). From 1666-1668 Pepys’s diary contains many references to Hayls, whom he also commissioned to paint his wife and father.

The Artist:

John Hayls was a prominent English portrait painter, draughtsman, and miniaturist working during the tumult of the British Baroque period. He lived through two civil wars, Oliver Cromwell’s joyless Protectorate, and Charles II’s Restoration.

Remarkable for copying Vandyck well.

 A portrait of himself in watercolours,  ill drawn but strongly colored, induced Vertue to the fact that Lely was not the only person whom Hayls had an ambition to rival but that this was a first essay in competition with Samuel Cooper.

Hayls was active in England as a portraitist from the 1640’s until the late 1660’s. Died in Bloomsbury in 1679 and is buried in St. Martins.