WHYTE'S IRISH & INTERNATIONAL ART MONDAY 26 SEPTEMBER 2022

128 94 Circle of Anna Dorothea Lisiewski-Therbusch (18th Century) A PORTRAIT OF FREDERICK II HOHENZOLLERN OF PRUSSIA (FREDERICK THE GREAT), HALF LENGTH, SEATED BY A DESK, WITH RED SASH oil on canvas frame inscribed ‘Presented by him to Sir Andrew Mitchell, Ambassador at his court’ 34 by 29in. (86.4 by 73.7cm) Frame Dimensions: 39 by 34.5in. (99.1 by 87.6cm) Provenance: Sir Andrew Mitchell; The Lords Reay; Captain HCP Hamilton, Moyne, Durrow, Co. Laois; Thence by descent; Adam’s, 10 October 2017, lot 237; Private collection The contemporaneous inscription on the frame indicates that this portrait was given to Sir Andrew Mitchell by Frederick The Great, King of Prussia. Sir Andrew Mitchell (1708–1771) was a British diplomat noted for his service as envoy to the court of Frederick the Great during the Seven Years’War. He served as Under-Secretary for Scotland from 1742 to 1746. He was a commissary in Brussels for negotiating a commercial agreement with Austria and the Netherlands from 1752 to 1755 and an envoy to Prussia from 1756 to June 1765 and from December 1765 to his death. In May 1756, Mitchell arrived in Berlin, and was enthusiastically received by Frederick. Prior to this, antagonism had steadily been building between France and England over shipping and territory rights, and the British king, concerned with the exposure of his Hanoverian territories should war arise, wished to draw closer to Prussia. It was Mitchell’s task to negotiate the Alliance and allay Frederick’s fears of an Austro-Russian counter-alliance. Frederick, who resented the broken promises and secret diplomacy of the French court during the Silesian Wars, was amenable, and England remained his only steady ally throughout the Seven Years’War. Mitchell stayed with King Frederick, recording his observations of the king at war in his journals, until his recall in 1764. He returned to Berlin two years later, having been knighted in the interim, and remained until his death in 1771. Though the relationship between Mitchell and Frederick had suffered from Frederick’s dissatisfaction with English policy at the end of the war and Mitchell’s disenchantment with Frederick’s “impatience of contradiction”, Frederick wrote in tribute that, “His talents and character had wholly gained my esteem and he retained it to the end of his days.” Frederick wept openly at Mitchell’s funeral procession. Anna Dotothea Therbusch was one of Frederick’s favourite artists and she carried out much of the decorative work on Frederick’s palaces. She liked to portray intellectual men and women in intimate and relaxed settings as we see in this portrait. The Mackay family, the Lords Reay, were neighbours and relations of the Mitchells in Scotland and apparently inherited this painting. When the senior branch of the Reays died out their possessions were inherited by the Hamiltons of Moyne, Co. Laois. No prints after this painting are recorded. €8,000-€12,000 (£6,900-£10,340 approx.) Click here for more images and to bid on this lot94