Kelmarsh Hall in Northamptonshire, England. The hall still retains the pink terracotta decoration by Nancy Lancaster.
Kelmarsh Hall is an elegant, 18th century country house. The present Palladian hall was built in 1732 for William Hanbury, a famous antiquarian, by Francis Smith of Warwick, to a James Gibbs design, described as, “a perfect, extremely reticent design…done in an impeccable taste”.
Detail from François-Hubert Drouais, Madame de Pompadour at her Tambour Frame, 1763-4
The painting shows the one-time mistress of Louis XV in the last year of her life. Born Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson in 1721, she became royal mistress and Marquise de Pompadour. She was a patron of the arts and letters and a leader of fashion who exercised considerable influence on the public policy of France.
The canvas is signed and dated on the work-table as begun in April 1763. The head, painted on a rectangle of canvas inserted into the painting, was presumably taken from life, and the rest of the picture completed in May 1764, the month after the death of Madame de Pompadour. Drouais’s painting is the last of numerous portraits of the sitter by some of the best-known painters of the day, including Boucher and Carle van Loo.
Ivory silk bodice, petticoat and sleeve with large patterned mauve ribbon in double bows to elbow from which cascades three tiers of delicate ivory lace (engageantes), matching patterned mauve ribbon cockade-like bows to center of bodice, holding in place a delicate lace worked fichu that drapes up over the shoulders. (text by “18th Century Art—Fashion” in Pinterest)