Lady Cecil Rice

Born in 1735, Cecil Talbot was the daughter of William Talbot, 1st Earl Talbot, and Mary de Cardonnel. At twenty-one she married George Rice, a member of parliament for the county of Carmarthenshire, Wales, who, from 1761 to 1770, served as commissioner to the Council of Trade and Foreign Plantations. She presumably sat for this portrait by Reynolds in 1762, when she was twenty-seven. The artist recorded meeting with a "Mrs. Rice" in his appointment book, though it is uncertain what prompted the commission of the portrait.

Lady Cecil had six children. With celebrated landscape architect Capability Brown, she and her husband redesigned the stylized formal gardens of their home at Newton House beginning in the 1760s and continuing through the rest of her life, transforming the grounds into what the agriculturalist Arthur Young called "the most picturesque residence . . . in England." Following her father's death in 1782, Lady Cecil--an only child and primary heir--became 2nd Baroness Dynevor, the only woman to carry that title. In 1787, she was granted by royal license the right to adopt her maternal surname, de Cardonnel, in accordance with her mother's will. Lady Cecil de Cardonnel, 2nd Baroness Dynevor, died in 1793.

Sources: Mannings, David. Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings. New Haven and London, 2000; The Frick Collection: An Illustrated Catalogue. Vol. IX. New York, 2003; Harden, Bettina. The Most Glorious Prospect: Garden Visiting in Wales 1639–1900. Llanelli, 2017

Edward Rhys Wingfield, Barrington Park, Oxon. Edward R. Bacon, New York, d. 1915. W. Rathbone Bacon, New York​, d. 1917. ​Mrs. Virginia P. Bacon. Henry Clay Frick, 1919. Helen Clay Frick, 1920. Mrs. I. Townsend Burden, Jr., Locust Valley, Long Island, New York​, 1953. Mrs. J. Fife Symington, Jr., Lutherville, Maryland​. Given by her to The Frick Collection in 1979.

Source: The Frick Collection: Drawings, Prints & Later Acquisitions. Volume IX. New York: The Frick Collection, 2003. Updated by The Curatorial Department in 2021.