This outstanding newly discovered portrait by Willem Wissing depicts Susanna Skipwith, Lady Williams, the wife of Sir John Williams and the one time mistress to James, Duke of York, later King James II.

Susanna was the daughter of the MP Sir Thomas Skipwith, Bt and his wife Elizabeth Latham, daughter of Ralph Latham of Upminster. On the 30 April 1673 she married Sir John Williams, 2nd Bt of Marnhull at Westminster Abbey. Sir John was the grandson of John Williams, the celebrated Welsh goldsmith who had made a fortune supplying James I and his court with silver plate and jewels.

Sir John had inherited Minster Court in Kent from his uncle, Sir John Williams, Bt of Minster following his death in 1669. Sir John had also bought a London townhouse at 14 St James’s Square, now the home of the London Library, shortly before his death in the autumn of 1680.

Although little is known of Lady Williams today, she is noted in contemporary sources as being an ‘intimate’ friend of the Duke of York, later James II. Many of the mistresses of the Royal brothers lived on or around St James’s Square as to give ease of access to St James’s Palace. This was certainly true of the infamous Nell Gwynn who lived around the corner from Lady Williams at 79 Pall Mall. Indeed Nell Gwyn appears to have known Lady Williams writing in a letter to Madame Jennings on the 14 April 1684 ‘I desire you would speake to my Ladie Williams to send me the gold stuffe’ going on to say ‘pray tell my Ladie Williams that the King’s Mistresses are accounted ill paymasters, but shee shall have her Money the next Day after I have the stuffe’. [1] This would suggest that, following her husband’s death, Lady Williams had gone into trade which suggests her ingenuity.

Looking at this portrait, Wissing has depicted Lady Williams in the loosely interpreted guise of the Madonna Annunciata, showing the moment the Madonna is interrupted in her prayers by the Angel Gabriel pronouncing the Annunciation. If looking at another portrait of Lady Williams, Jan van der Vaart’s portrait at Burghley House, it is clear that Lady Williams was intensely religious. These two portraits are not the subtly mocking religious guises adopted by other mistresses, such as Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland’s portrait in the guise of Saint Catherine of Alexandra, a direct reference to her relationship with the King, ahead of his own wife Catherine of Braganza.

However, if looking at a mezzotint after Wissing, from a presumably lost original, Lady Williams is portrayed in a manner that is the antithesis of this portrait. Shown at full length, wearing a particularly revealing gown and looking lasciviously out to the viewer, Lady Williams looks every part the Royal mistress. Indeed, it would seem looking at this mezzotint that the contemporary speculation that Lady Williams was a mistress to James, Duke of York were entirely true.

It would seem perhaps, in looking at this Wissing depiction in comparison to the mezzotint, that Lady Williams was deeply regretful of her role as a mistress and was perhaps atoning for her sins through the vehicle of portraiture.

Willem Wissing painted this portrait at the height of his success in London in 1685, shortly before his untimely death in 1687, at the age of only 31. The quick impasto brush work in the face and sketchy unfinished work in the headscarf Lady Williams wears gives an insight into how the artist worked and shows that Wissing really studied the sitter in preparation for the portrait. This unfinished nature is particularly unusual for Wissing’s portraits and when combined with the artist’s typical rich colour palette, a truly spectacular Restoration portrait has been created.

[1] Peter Cunningham, The Story of Nell Gwyn, and the Sayings of Charles the Second, London, 1888, p. 103